


It's a Stan-derful Life

by Sock_Lobster



Series: It's a Stan-derful Life [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: "Choose not to warn" should be heeded., M/M, Reality Warping, Sibling Incest, Time Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:21:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9631415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sock_Lobster/pseuds/Sock_Lobster
Summary: Thanks to Time Baby, Stan gets the chance to fix things. Really fix them, not just clean up after himself and his dumb mistakes for Ford.What could possibly go wrong?





	1. Squeaky Frog of Summoning

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授权翻译】 It's a Stan-derful Life/斯坦牌人生](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650753) by [flameinthedark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flameinthedark/pseuds/flameinthedark)



> Written for [this prompt on the Gravity Falls kinkmeme.](https://kinky-falls.dreamwidth.org/263.html?thread=56839#cmt56839)
> 
> OP asked for Stan to get a redo, but I've run away with it slightly. The plot's already structured; I'll post the chapters as they get written and add warnings as they apply.
> 
> This assumes some things from Journal 3, including Time Baby's reconstitution. Shouldn't be hard to follow without that, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for first chapter: Time Baby's speech is formatted obnoxiously to mimic his voice in the show. Stan is walking around in his underwear. Time Baby has no appreciation for British sci-fi.

Stan wakes up the morning of the kids' birthday party before anyone else. He doesn't mean to, but he keeps hearing a squeaking noise, and it's driving him crazy.

He searches the Shack starting at the attic because weird cutesy noises have a good chance of being Mabel-related. The kids are both fast asleep, though. They're sprawled out on the floor between their beds, looking like they fell asleep talking to each other. Stan ignores the pressing matter of annoying noises to just stop and get a good look at them.

Today they leave. Stan knows he's made a few mistakes with them this summer, but they seem pretty fond of him anyway. If he’s being completely honest, which he never really feels comfortable doing but he can about manage it in his own head without feeling exposed, he's going to miss them more than he has words for.

The squeaky noise is gonna kill him, though. It’s not here, so time to check if Ford’s dissecting a gnome or something.

Stan goes through the house. The noise is weirdly hard to track down. It seems to come from everywhere. He’s about to go check in the basement when he spots something kinda glowy through the window of the den.

Stan walks out of the house in his underwear and slippers and finds a giant glowing baby floating in the yard. It’s playing with a stuffed frog that squeaks with every squeeze. 

“Welp,” he says. “So much for not totally losing my mind.”

 **“STANLEY PINES,”** the baby says with a voice like getting your head shoved into an amp at a rock concert.

“Yep, that’s me,” Stan says. He’s already over this. One week of normal is apparently too much to ask the universe. “What did I do this time?”

**“YOU HAVE DONE TIME BABY A FAVOR BY BESTING A MOST OBNOXIOUS FOE.”**

“Time what?” Stan frowns, rubs the back of his head, and feels something float to the surface in the opaque soup of his mind. “Time Baby? You’re that god thing that give Soos the pizza, right?”

**“INDEED. YOUR SOOS USED HIS GIFTED TIME WISH WITH WISDOM BEYOND HIS YEARS.”**

“Yeah, okay. What’re you doing in my yard? Your… Time.. Baby... Lord-ness.” What exactly is the proper address for a giant floating baby, anyway?

**“I AM NOT A LORD. I AM A BABY. THOSE GUYS ARE DOODOO-HEADS, AND I AM HERE TO HONOR YOUR BRAVERY IN THE FACE OF ANOTHER DOODOO-HEAD.”**

“Which doodoo-head? I meet a lot of ‘em,” Stan says with a shrug, because apparently this is happening.

 **“THE DOODOO-HEAD KNOWN AS BILL CIPHER. HE FORCED ME TO REGENERATE MY EXISTENCE AND THAT IS VERY ANNOYING. I DO NOT LIKE DOING IT. ONE THOUSAND YEARS IS NO SMALL HURDLE EVEN FOR ONE SUCH AS MYSELF.”** Time Baby punctuates this by pounding his fists on his floating carrier thing and you know, sparking lightning out of his eyes. The lightning dies back down after a moment, and Time Baby looks at Stan with confusion. **“WHY ARE YOU COVERING YOUR EARS?”**

Stan winces, caught. “Uh, it’s nothing. Just, your voice is a little… ear drum shatter-y?” he says.

**“OH. YES. I HAVE BEEN TOLD THIS BY MY SUBJECTS BEFORE. WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO USE MY ‘INSIDE VOICE’? THOUGH WE ARE NOT INSIDE.”**

“I mean, I don’t want to tell you what to do, Time Baby, uh... sir, but if you don’t mind.”

 **“I CAN HUMOR A HERO.** **HOW IS THIS?”**

Only marginally less terrifying. Still somewhere in the nightmare range. “Great, great,” Stan says. “Perfect inside voice. Thanks. For that.”

**“YOU ARE WELCOME. NOW, LET US DISCUSS THE MATTER OF THE REWARD I WISH TO GIVE TO YOU.”**

“You really don’t have to do that,” Stan says. He’s usually not one to turn down rewards, but he’s feeling like maybe he wants this gigantic baby out of his yard as soon as possible. Kinda freaking him out. “I did it for my family, couldn’t have done it without them anyway, so...”

**“YES. THIS IS HONORABLE. I WILL REWARD YOU FOR THIS. BILL WAS A JERK.”**

“You really don’t have--”

**“DO NOT DARE TO ARGUE WITH ME, THE OVERLORD OF TIME. YOU WILL ACCEPT THIS REWARD.”**

Stan huddles down, covering his ears. He’s proud he doesn’t piss himself. “Okay! Okay! I will accept this reward! Sheesh!”

 **“GOOD.”** Time Baby squeaks his frog toy with a satisfied air.

Stan straightens cautiously and says, “So… what’s the reward? Is it pizza? I’ll be honest, too much cheese gives me gas these days.”

**“IT IS NOT PIZZA UNLESS YOU WILL IT TO BE SO. IT IS A TIME WISH.”**

“And a Time Wish is?”

**“A SINGLE WISH THAT ALLOWS YOU TO CHANGE ANYTHING IN TIME WITHOUT PARADOXICAL CONSEQUENCES. IT IS A FORCE OF EXTREME POWER.”**

Stan blinks. “ _Anything_ in time?”

**“YES.”**

“Shit,” Stan says. His brain, soupy as it is even after a week of being reminded about the whole of his life begins bubbling with the possi--

**“SWEAR JAR.”**

“What?”

 **“YOU MAY NOT USE THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE IN FRONT OF BABIES, EVEN IF YOU ARE A HERO,”** Time Baby says. An old jam jar with ‘Swears Are for Squares!’ written in marker on it appears by Stan’s shoulder. **“ONE TIME COIN.”**

“I don’t have ‘time coins’.”

**“ONE ERA APPROPRIATE COIN WILL DO.”**

Stan searches his person. Even in just his sleeping underwear, he’s got a couple gold coins sewn into the waistband because he’s not a moron. Normally, he’d try getting out of this or finding a penny somewhere, but geeze. He’s not going to go ticking off another cosmic force creature at his family if he can help it. It’d be kinda awkward this time. Stan’s willing to punch a baby if he has to, but the kids might take that the wrong way.

“Here,” Stan says. He drops the coin in the jar with a clink, and the whole thing winks back out of any existence that he’s aware of. “So, you’re saying anything in time is mine to change?”

**“YES.”**

“That’s--” Amazing? Wonderful? Everything Stan’s ever wanted? ...Terrifying? “A lot to take in,” Stan says, eventually.

 **“IT IS A VERY SERIOUS MATTER,”** Time baby agrees with a regal nod.

Stan rubs his face with both hands. He feels a little dizzy. He asks, “Can I phone a friend here?”

**“YOU WISH TO MAKE A PHONE CALL?”**

“No, I mean, can I consult someone else? Get advice?” Stan’s not sure why Ford and the kids haven’t coming running with all the bowel-shaking yelling. He thinks it’s probably Time Baby’s doing. “You doing something to my family to make them not hear you?”

**“I HAVE SET ASIDE THIS TIME SLIVER FOR YOU AND I TO TALK. I CAN ALLOW THEM TO ENTER IT, IF YOU WISH TO CONSULT THEM.”**

Stan thinks about all the times he and his brother have screwed up by not talking to each other. All those _decades_ apart. Stan’s not even sure yet if Ford will want him around once the kids are gone, saving the world or no. It’s gonna kill him to say goodbye to the kids and possibly to Ford at the same time, but he hasn’t had the guts to check yet.

Then he thinks about the kids making the same mistakes, but working through it, asleep on the floor together. Stan thinks about falling asleep with Ford in the living room a couple nights ago, home movies playing quietly.

“Yeah, I’d like my brother here,” Stan says. “He’s the smart one, anyway.”

 **“VERY WELL.”** Time baby picks up a duck toy and slams it down three times. He begins squeaking his frog toy again with the other fist. **“STANFORD PINES. YOU ARE SUMMONED TO THE PRESENCE OF TIME BABY.”**

Stan turns around to face the door. He wants to see Ford’s reaction. Sure enough, when Ford comes out a few moments later, he stops just outside the door and stares, but it’s kinda anti-climatic.

“Oh. Time Baby,” Ford says. Stan tries not to be too miffed that he doesn’t sound _that_ surprised and is still somehow more dressed than him. Does he sleep in the trench coat outfit? That’s just sad. “To what do we owe the honor?”

**“I HAVE COME TO THANK YOUR BROTHER FOR HIS BRAVERY IN DEFEATING THE EXTREME DOODOO-HEAD KNOWN AS BILL CIPHER. HE HAS ASKED FOR YOU TO ADVISE HIM ON THE MATTER.”**

Ford looks from Time Baby to Stan, and then looks Stan up and down. “You couldn’t put on a robe?”

Oh, for the love of god. “Don’t make me smack you in front of a baby, Ford.”

Ford walks off the porch and comes to stand by him, perfectly within punching reach but like he’s not at all worried about that. More fool him. “What do you want my advice on, exactly?” he asks.

“Apparently I’m getting a ‘Time Wish’? Change anything from any point in time. No destroying reality by accident,” Stan says, and watches his brother’s face very carefully.

 _There’s_ the surprise he wanted. Ford’s eyes go wide, and he looks back and forth from Stan to Time Baby. “Oh,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“That’s definitely something.”

“You want me to tell the cosmic baby with power over time itself, ‘Hey, thanks for the honor, but I’m not dressed properly’?”

Ford narrows his eyes. “It was just a thought, Stanley.”

“Stupid thought,” Stan says. “I just told him your were the smart one, even. Maybe I should ask for the kids instead.”

“If they’re so used to you wandering around undressed that it wouldn’t warrant a comment, that says more about you than it does about me. They’re children.”

“What? It’s not like I’m walking around with my junk out, you weirdo. Some of us don’t wear turtlenecks and trench coats in the middle of summer.”

Ford takes a breath, inflates like an angry parrot, and begins , “Well, some of us--” only for Time Baby to slam his fist down again.

Stan and Ford both startle and look away from each other to Time Baby, who says, **“I HAVE ALL OF TIME ITSELF AT MY COMMAND AND EVEN I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS, PINES BROTHERS.”**

Stan winces and says, “Sorry.”

“Sorry,” Ford agrees. He doesn’t sound it, but Stan’s gonna let that slide. The jerk.

“So I’m thinking I can fix something,” Stan says instead of arguing further. “And I think I know what you’d want me to fix, but I figured I’d check in with you before altering reality.”

Ford frowns. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Stanley.”

“The he- ...ck you aren’t. I’m talking about that stupid machine of yours in high school. Fix that, you go to your dream school, everything’s great, right?” Stan says, his hands palm up toward Ford like he’s presenting the idea physically and not just in speech. It seems really obvious to him, but Ford’s big brain does weird things, sometimes.

Like now for instance. Ford doesn’t jump at the offer. Instead he makes a very serious face and says, “We have no way of knowing the consequences of that, Stanley. Even minor changes in recent time could potentially change life as Earth knows it. We’re talking about something that happened fifty years ago.”

“So what if it was fifty years ago? You telling me you’re over it?”

Ford pauses, his face twitches just slightly. He recovers quickly. “Stanley, you don’t know what you could be doing if you choose that,” he says, but it’s too late. Stan caught him; some part of Ford wants it.

...He does have a point though.

“Time Baby sir?” Stan asks.

**“YES?”**

“Is there any way I could get a preview? A ‘try before you buy’ deal?” Stan’s actively fought against offering customers those deals, but the hypocrisy doesn’t bug him in the least when they’re talking about all of reality. “If you’re giving a guy like me this much power, it might be good to see what could happen first.”

Time Baby hums thoughtfully. He even brings one tubby fist up to his chin and strokes it. It’d be cute if he wasn’t all-powerful and terrifying.

 **“THIS IS AN INTERESTING THOUGHT,”** he says after a moment. **“I AM INTRIGUED. THIS IS NOT A NORMAL PART OF THE TIME WISH BESTOWING, BUT AS THE DEED YOU HAVE DONE TO EARN IT IS NOT THE USUAL ACT OF WINNING GLOBNAR, I MAY BE WILLING TO MAKE AN EXCEPTION.”**

Stan grins smugly at Ford. Ford still doesn’t look happy, but whatever.

 **“YES,”** Time Baby continues. **“I HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS IS HOW I SHALL SPEND MY TIME BEFORE NAPPING. I DO LIKE TO WATCH CAUSALITY IN ACTION. STANLEY PINES, YOU WILL HAVE THREE PREVIEWS AVAILABLE TO YOU BEFORE YOU MUST MAKE YOUR PERMANENT WISH. EACH PREVIEW SHALL LAST THE SPAN OF ONE DAY’S TIME WITHIN THE WORLD THAT RESULTS FROM YOUR ALTERATION. DO YOU FIND THIS ACCEPTABLE?”**

“Absolutely, Time Baby sir. That’s very gracious of you,” Stan says, delighted to have gotten three chances, though he doesn’t think he’ll need them.

 **“YES. I AM A MOST BENEVOLENT OVERLORD,”** Time Baby says smugly. He squeaks his duck and frog toys for emphasis.

“I’m coming, too,” Ford says stubbornly. Then he seems to remember he’s talking to a being that could crush him like an ant and adds more humbly, “Please. Stanley did ask for my advice.”

 **“VERY WELL. YOU MAY ACCOMPANY HIM IN THE PREVIEWS.”**

“So you get to watch me fix things. It’ll be great,” Stan says. Ford just sighs and crosses his arms.

 **“NOW, STANLEY PINES.”** Time baby says solemnly, holding a rattle like a scepter or judge’s gavel. **“WHAT IS THE FIRST WISH YOU WISH TO TRY?”**

Stan takes a deep breath and looks at his brother. Time to fix everything, huh? Even if Ford’s going to be a jerk about it, Stan will still do it for him.

He holds Ford’s gaze and says, “I wish I’d never broken my brother’s science project.”


	2. Stan in a Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sadly, torture boxes are a thing that exists in this world, and also sadly, Ducktective is not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: A really dire lack of comedy. Stan's tortured a bit, in both the literal and melodramatic sense. Alt-Ford got "carried away."

Stan expects flashes and lightning and waking up in a new world.

Instead, Time Baby’s rattle begins rattling. The sound is amazingly _really_ specifically like shattering bones, gasping lungs, and human frailty. It looks like a rattle. It makes a noise like despair; Stan’s familiar with the sound.

“Uh,” Stan says, reluctantly tearing his eyes from Ford’s to look at Time Baby.

Time Baby hums thoughtfully. **“THE DEATH RATTLE SOUNDS WHEN A WISH WILL LIKELY RESULT IN THE WISHER’S DEATH. YOU MAY WANT TO SPECIFY YOUR OWN SURVIVAL.”**

Ford snorts. ”I told you so” rolls off him in waves without having to be said. Stan only refrains from flipping him off because there’s probably a jar for that, too. ‘Rude gestures are for crude jesters!’ or something.

Instead he throws his hands up in general frustration. “Why the heck would that wish kill me?”

“Honestly, with your diet and lifestyle choices, I’m surprised you’ve made it this far,” Ford says. He shrugs. “This might be the timeline you just happened to be lucky to not have a heart attack, drive off a cliff, or get killed by the mob. Don’t let that stop you, though.”

Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. Why the hell he cares so much about this asshole, he’s never gonna know. There are guys who meet nice girls, get married, have kids, stay married, and grow old together, and instead Stan’s got his thing about Ford.

“Okay, fine. I wish I’d never broken my brother’s science project, but also I managed to survive to the age I am now,” he says.

_That’s_ when the flashes and lightning and waking up in a new world happen.

 

Stan blinks awake at a bare white ceiling. It’s unnaturally bright white, glowing annoyingly. Stan rubs his eyes and sits up, stares at the equally bare, white, glowing walls. Then he looks down at himself. It’s not one he’s familiar with, but prison jumpsuits are pretty universal, and Stan’s familiar with enough of them. 

“Shit,” he says. 

_**BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!** _

“What the--” Stan nearly jumps out of his skin as the walls all flash a giant red X. He covers his ears against the buzzer and stares in muted shock as, “STRIKE ONE FOR INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE” blinks onto the all the flat surfaces. Stan wonders if a jar’s gonna slide out of the wall, but thankfully not.

The buzzer dies down. The walls, ceiling, and floor all return to white, except for a small red X that settles into one corner on all of them. That’s when Stan uncovers his ears, lowers his arms, and sees there’s also a red X on the back of his right hand.

“Sweet Moses,” he says cautiously. Nothing happens.

Stan heaves himself out of the bed to stand. The floor feels oddly giving beneath his oddly bare feet. He’s in a one-piece jumpsuit that’s a muted blue but is otherwise plain. No prisoner number, even. Stan pats his stomach and finds that, hey, at least he’s skinnier. He even feels around in his mouth with his tongue and thinks these might either actually be his own teeth or some really good implants. His eyes are working better than they have in ages. That’s... something, right?

Stan walks around the cell. It’s a perfect cube, smooth and no doors or windows, just the blocky-looking bed, a small toilet and sink. All the surfaces feel like the floor, slick but giving, like fancy plastic pulled tight over padding. Even the toilet is uncomfortably similar in texture.

“Hey! Walls!” he tries, and the walls don’t respond. “Is anyone or anything listening? Hello?!” Still nothing.

Stan tries knocking on and then kicking the nearest wall. No one comes to tell him to stop, and the walls don’t chastise him again. He sits back down on his bed.

So, he’s in prison. A really weird, futuristic prison with screens for walls and the ability to print Xs on his hand. Stan doesn’t even know how it could have gotten there. He hadn’t felt anything, and it’s not rubbing off. It’s like his skin just decided to suddenly be bright red in the exact shape of an X.

Stan keeps rubbing it idly. He doesn’t know anything about what he did to get here, doesn’t know where here is, doesn’t know anything about this reality. If he does make this wish, he’s going to have to do some more specifying. “And also I don’t wind up in prison because seriously, why the heck would I want that, and also also, I’d like to know what’s going on.”

Stan knows prisons, though. Even if this one is really strange, someone at some point is going to feed him or try to murder him. He can learn more then. He just has to wait.

And wait...

And keep waiting even though he’s run out of songs to hum to himself.

Still waiting, even when mushy plain food slides out on a tray from a gap in the wall with no discernible edges. It tastes like tapioca and depression.

And more waiting when the empty tray slides into the floor.

Waiting when he uses the can.

Waiting when he washes his hands. Doo-da doo.

More food comes. Stan wonders how the kids are doing.

More food goes. Ford’s gotta be a famous scientist that changed the world, and moved technology forward somehow.

Still waiting. Do they have Ducktective in this world?

Still waiting...

Oh to hell with it.

“Fucking shitballs!” Stan yells at the walls; he punches one for the heck of it. They all do the flash thing, the buzzer sounds, another red X joins the first on his hand.

Stan gives it a minute, and then follows it up with, “And screw your uglyass, donkeyfucking mother, father, and sister, too! And to hell with your dumbass-smartass brother!”

This time, there’s no buzzer or flashing lights. Stan just drops through the floor.

He falls into a... chair? It's like a dentist chair on steroids. Straps come up around his limbs, torso, and neck, one even comes up and wraps around his forehead to hold his head back against the rest. Everything's still that unnatural white, and okay, maybe, _"Whatever it is can't be worse than waiting around in here"_ was a stupid thought to have. Stan's willing to admit he may have been horribly wrong there. Maybe.

Then something mechanical shaped like a hand pops up to force Stan's mouth open and shove a tube into it, and this has gotten way too lights-out-in-Bogota all of a sudden. A thick liquid starts oozing down the tube. Stan is faced with either swallowing or drowning, and he’s genuinely considering just drowning and ending this bullshit trial run. It’s not a very dignified way to go out, but he’s not gonna let…some stupid...

Huh.

Stan swallows. He relaxes all over.

What was he thinking about again...? Drowning? Stupid idea. He just needs to calm down and everything will be fine. Stan breathes deeply through his nose and sighs it back out in a much more content mood.

The chair beneath him reclines further, though Stan barely notices. He’s feeling pretty good. He’s feeling “crashed a college party in the 80s and got some fancy drug handed to him” good, which he hasn’t felt since he did just that. Maybe prison’s not that bad here.

“Stanley Pines,” a woman’s voice sighs from somewhere. She sounds both annoyed and fond. 

“Yep, that’s me,” Stan says, and that’s when he notices his mouth is free again. Nice. He licks his lips where they’re sore from the tube, and then he likes the feeling so much he keeps doing it.

“We’re going to have to have another correctional lesson, Stanley.”

“Sounds good,” Stan sighs.

“I’m glad you agree, Stanley. Now, let’s watch the first video,” the woman says cheerfully.

Above Stan, a screen turns from white to full color. He’s looking up at a ceiling fan, he can see soft blue walls at the edges. The scene above changes as the chair beneath him shifts, the whole effect being that of sitting up. The screen shifts, his head with it, and he’s looking down beside him in bed at a woman’s shoulder. She rolls over sleepily, and she’s lovely. Probably in her sixties maybe. Nice brown eyes with laugh lines.

She says, “Mornin’, honey,” with a sweet smile.

Stan smiles back at her. “Mornin’, sweetie,” he says dreamily.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Stan says, though he doesn’t know if he did.

“Good. We got a big day today. The grandkids are in that play, you remember?” she asks, sitting up.

“Uh, yeah, sure I do,” Stan says.

She narrows her eyes. “Did you forget about the play, Stanley?”

Stan shrugs. “Maybe, heh.”

The woman laughs, and Stan feels himself warm all over with love and affection. She’s perfect. This is perfect. Everything’s just perfect.

The chair Stan forgot he was in drops. He’s jolted back into awareness as the screen of the perfect lady winks out, back to blank, glowing white.

“How did that feel, Stanley?” the first woman asks.

“That felt good,” he says, a little hurt that the lady in the bed is no longer there. “Really good. She was so good.”

“That’s right, Stanley. And wasn’t the house nice? The bed and the walls, the fan and the quilt?”

“Yes,” Stan says, though he hadn’t really noticed the quilt.

“Now, let’s look at the other video,” the woman says, and her voice has shifted. It no longer sounds fond and pleasant. It sounds electronic, and Stan has enough time for that to worry about before the screen blinks back on.

This time, he’s looking up at a different ceiling. It’s dark and stained. He’s made to sit up again, and he finds he’s on the floor of a bar. He stands in the loud room. The music is killing his ears. Everything faintly hurts.

Stan walks to the bar without getting a choice in the matter, and he sits down. The bartender is this hideous beast of a guys with voice like grinding glass who asks, “What’ll it be?”

Stan opens his mouth, not sure what he’s going to say, but someone cuts him off.

“This fuckin wimp’s not man enough to have a drink here,” another, even worse voice says. Stan’s head turns and he find himself looking at a man with a face like a car wreck. His eyes are bloodshot, and there’s scars everywhere. “Why don’t you get the fuck out of here?”

Everything’s hurting more now. Stan can’t trace it to any specific cause, but he feels tense and sore all over. Who does this asshole think he is?

He says, “Hey, fuck you. Let a man drink in peace.”

Stan jolts. He’s being shocked or punched or something. The college party feel good is long gone, and all he knows is pain everywhere. He strains against the straps holding him to the chair. He has to get out of this. This is going to kill him.

It stops all at once, just when Stan’s a second from passing out.

“Now, how did that feel?” the woman asks.

Stan sobs at her.

“Exactly. Not very good, was it? Answer me, Stanley.”

“No,” Stan whimpers.

“That’s right, Stanley. Why would you want a life of violence and vice when you are happier in the other one? Let’s go over it again with some more--”

“Open the chamber _now!_ ” Stan hears faintly, like a shout on the other side of a field. He’s not sure he believes his ears when his brain recognizes the voice.

The chair sits Stan upright. The straps drop away. Stan watches in mute relief as the wall in front of him, perfectly smooth before, comes apart in the middle to let a door open and a man walk through. It’s a relief and and all, but...

“...Do you seriously have a metal eyepatch?” Stan asks. He’s feeling weak, ill, and confused, but he’s not gonna let that stop incredulity.

Ford sighs. “I don’t want to talk about it, Stanley.” He stomps up and jabs Stan in the neck with a needle.

“Fuck, _ow,_ ” Stan says. Thankfully nothing lights up, though Ford’s hand comes down over his mouth.

“Do yourself a favor and don’t talk again until you’re out of here,” Ford says in a low voice. He squeezes Stan’s face once before letting go.

Stan’s ready to tell him to go to hell, but he begins to feel weird. Like maybe he’s gonna-- Stan pukes over the side of the chair. It’s not normal vomit but a weird goop that sparkles faintly. It might even be spark _ing._ He’s kinda pleased he gets some on Ford’s shiny boots and regrets he didn’t get any on the dramatic black coat Ford’s wearing.

“Better?” Ford asks, annoyed. He taps his boot toe on the floor like that’s gonna help.

Stan nods. He does suddenly feel more normal. Shitty, but normal. He’s not floating on a cloud of ecstasy, but he’s also not in horrendous pain. Middle ground’s not bad. 

“Wonderful. Get out of the chair,” Ford says, still being a snappish asshole. He does get one arm around Stan’s back and help, at least. He doesn’t even let go when Stan’s fully upright, possibly because Stan’s wobbling something awful.

“Thanks, Ford,” Stan mumbles. He’s prepared to be the bigger man here.

Ford’s arm tightens briefly. “You really want to stay quiet until we’re out,” he says. As an afterthought, he adds, “Please.”

Stan keeps hanging on to Ford as they walk out of the freaky torture chamber and past a couple of cowering guards in white jumpsuits. They and the rest of the staff Stan and Ford pass along the freaky white hallways keep saluting, and there’s no way it’s for Stan. A couple of them even try bowing, looking shocked.

“Who--”

“Shh.”

Because Ford did bother to say “please”, Stan bites the inside of his cheek and keeps walking. Eventually the white hallways and bare glowing blocks give way to a lobby area. More staff are scurrying around, some of them are scrubbing the floor by hand right up until they notice Stan and Ford come trudging in. They hide their wet scrub brushes immediately when they do. They’re fucking terrified.

A tall woman in a different uniform --tighter, more off-white, may have shoulder pads?-- than the rest comes scurrying up. She’s already saying, “Sorry, Mr. Secretary, we had no idea there was going to be a transfer, sir. Please understand, sir, that there wasn’t anything in the system, sir--”

“I am going to have your communications manager’s head for this if we are not allowed out of here in peace!” Ford declares grandly. Stan doesn’t buy it for a moment, but everyone else in the room jumps. Man, what the hell?

The woman cowers, nods silently, and ducks out of their way. Stan’s jaw hangs open.

“You look like a fish, Stanley. Stop it,” Ford mutters out of the corner of his mouth. They’re making their way into what must be a garage, because there are suddenly things that look reassuringly like cars around. What they’re heading for is definitely a future-y limo.

“Oh, sorry, _Mr. Secretary,_ ” Stan says. “Please forgive my surprise, Mr. _Secretary._ ”

“Oh, shut it,” Ford says. He’s blushing. It’s a weird look combined with the terrifying metal thing covering his eye.

“Anything you say, Mr. Secretary, _sir._ ”

Ford’s arm tightens around Stan threateningly. Stan doesn’t feel threatened, though. He feels somewhere between ready to die laughing and just plain ready to die. There’s even a little bit of perverse lust thrown in there, but Stan’s used to ignoring that.

“Watch your head,” Ford says when they reach the limo. Any care in the words is negated by the way he shoves Stan headlong into the back.

“Ouch,” Stan tells the leather seat. He chooses to just lie there, limp like a stuffed monkey covered in glitter paint and bird seed on the back porch of life.

Ford climbs in and sits across from him. The door closes, and then the vehicle is moving. After a long bout of silence, Ford sighs yet again, but this time sounds more relieved than anything. Like he’s deflating.

“Are you okay?” he asks. He sounds genuinely worried.

Stan, who’s been vegetating with his face in the seat cushion, looks up and finds that Ford also looks genuinely worried.

“No,” Stan admits because that much is really fucking obvious. Why hide it? “What the hell was all that?”

“A mental correction facility,” Ford says with distaste.

“That was an asylum? I thought that was some torture prison!”

“Both, really. The idea is to remold difficult individuals into productive members of society.” Stan pulls a face. Ford shrugs. “That at least wasn’t actually my idea. Davidson’s in charge of the healthcare system and the prisons. Mallory helped him get the correction program working.”

“Who are Davidson and Mallory?”

“Two of the people with whom I went to college, formed a study group, and got asked by the United States government to form a think tank to solve the Soviet Union,” Ford says.

Stan feels himself looking like a fish again. He pulls it together and says, “ _What?_ ”

“Don’t… don’t look at a world map while we’re here,” Ford says. He looks embarrassed. “We got carried away.”

‘Carried away.’ Well, that sounds horrifying. “What exactly are you the ‘Mr. Secretary’ of?”

“State, Defense, and Education.”

“Those aren’t even the same position.”

“They have been since I took them.”

“And that was when?”

“Thirty-odd years ago. I have the position for life.”

Stan stares and keeps staring, and when he just can’t anymore, turns his face back into the seat cushion. “Oh my god,” he tells it.

“Do you see now?” Ford asks, voice high-pitched like he gets when he’s feeling awkward. “How could you have predicted that in order to exclude it from your wish?”

“Okay, you’re right, I didn’t think you would become a dictator,” Stan admits flatly. “Didn’t see that coming. Shoot me.”

“It all made sense at the time! There were all these things to fix, so I fixed them. Then I just... kept doing it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I never made the choice to become an oligarch!”

“Yep.” Despite his best efforts not to think too hard about it, a thought does force itself out of Stan’s mouth: “How is it you know all this and I don’t?”

Ford’s quiet. Stan turns his head enough to see him with a thinking face on. “It was like I lived it,” Ford says. “I don’t know if I really did or if I just have memories of it, and it heads into an area philosophy I don’t much care for to quibble over whether that’s the same thing or not. Either way, this morning I was sitting and eating breakfast, and suddenly I’m _me_ with memories of this life and the one we came from.”

“Why don’t I remember, though?” Stan asks.

Ford winces, and Stan watches in surprise as he covers his face with his hands. “You wouldn’t remember anything in one of those facilities, Stanley. That’s part of how they work.”

“You fix people by wiping their minds? Cool. Very progressive,” Stan says. He’s not gonna think about that meaning two lives he’s not remembering right, because today’s been stressful enough.

“It’s usually only for particularly difficult cases,” Ford says. “Which you obviously are and would be in any reality. And as I told you, it’s not actually my department.”

“But you --the you that lived this or whatever-- you knew I was in one of those?”

“The me that lived this knew that the you that lived this was in one, yes.” Ford rubs his face enough to make the features all pull down with his fingertips, the metal eyepatch notwithstanding. Seriously, what the hell is with that thing? “He even recommended that you be transferred to that specific one. It’s closer to DC than the one you were first committed to.”

“Thanks for keeping me in a closer torture box?”

“You can’t hold things an alternate version of me did against me, Stanley, especially when there wouldn’t even be the alternate without you making that wish.” Ford slips down from his seat to the floor of the limo and reaches out. Stan holds still as he checks the spot on his neck the needle went into. Like he can’t stop himself being more accurate, Ford quietly adds, “Or, actually, he probably would still exist in the infinite possibilities of existence, but you wouldn’t know about it to resent me for it.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s my own fault.” Stan blows a raspberry at him. Then, because he’s pathetic but also he figures he’s earned the right to be a little pathetic, he reaches up and puts his hand on Ford’s wrist to keep him from pulling away again. Ford leaves his hand on Stan’s neck without objecting.

After a while, he continues being more accurate. “I’d like to state for the record that this is just one of the exponentially large number of possible outcomes of my going to West Coast Tech, and that it required fifty years of further decisions, accidents, and reactions to reach this point. This is by no means the only route I could have taken, and that is precisely why this wishing business is such a bad idea. Unless you think you can sit down and predict all the many ways in which reality could branch off over half a century, you risk allowing probability to drop us into something that meets the technical minimum of your specifications but varies wildly from what your desired outcome was. You’re fighting chaos itself, and it will only get worse the further--”

He probably says more. Probably a lot more. Probably prepared to write a frickin’ book on it. Stan falls asleep, though.

 

He wakes up gasping and with someone fighting him. Or he’s fighting someone. Or someone’s just trying to hold him still while he fights the air.

“Stanley!”

Stan freezes, blinks his gummy eyes and looks around. He’s on his back on the floor of a fancy car with Ford holding him down by the shoulders. Stan’s had a dream like that before, but this isn’t going anything like the dream. Nightmare, then.

He stares up at Ford and feels embarrassed. To counter that, he says breathlessly, “You’re married to a mechanical miner. Did anyone tell you that?”

Ford gapes at him. At least it’s a better look than pitying worry. “Are you actually awake?”

“Yes, I am awake.”

“...Minor-with-an-o or miner-with-an-e?” Ford asks like the answer is gonna scar him either way.

Stan’s tempted to tell him it was indeed an underage robot. Really tempted, but loyalty wins out; he can’t disrespect Goldie like that. “Miner with a gold pan. A real hero.”

“And _that’s_ what you were dreaming about?” Ford asks.

“Nah, the limo just reminded me. I don’t remember much about that weekend even without the mind wipe, to be honest. The kids definitely weren’t there. Figured I should tell you that you have a husband, though.”

“He’s not my husband if my criminal brother forged my signature on a marriage certificate. The law doesn't work like that. You can’t even marry a mechanical anything, Stanley,” Ford snaps. He lets go of Stan’s shoulders and sits back, though. “We’re here, by the way.”

“Here being...?”

“My highly-defensible compound underground in the countryside of Virginia.”

Stan laughs. “You don’t have any sex slaves, brainwashed wives, or human experiments going on in it, do you?” he asks.

“Currently, no,” Ford says with a glare. The metal eyepatch really sells it, and he exits the vehicle _without_ being more accurate. Stan doesn’t know what interpretation of that answer he finds funniest or most nauseating.

Stan scoots around until he get his feet out the door, and then takes the hand Ford offers him. He straightens and finds himself in a large garage again. There are other cars around. Some of them even look like cars Stan’s used to. Most of them are way classier, except--

“Why’s _my_ car here?” Stan walks over in barefeet to the Stanleymobile. It looks good. It’s not even dusty. He puts his cheek to the hood like a hug and considers kissing it.

“It was going to be broken down for scrap when you were committed,” Ford says very casually. “Cars like that aren’t allowed on the road anymore. The engine’s been outlawed and the safety rating of the body is abysmal. You were breaking the law just by owning it.”

So, the Ford here took it instead of letting it get scrapped? “Huh,” Stan says. He pats the hood lovingly.

“I figure a day means twenty-four hours, unless Time Baby is somehow inexact about time periods,” Ford says, done with the car subject even though Stan’s not. “Since it began at approximately six this morning, we have about four left. We can wait inside.”

“Are there other world-conquering lunatics here or are these cars all yours?” Stan asks, though he does let Ford lead him to an elevator.

“Mine. There should be plenty of food here, if you think you might be up for it.”

“Why do you need that many cars?”

“They were gifts, mostly,” Ford admits, embarrassed again. It takes Stan a beat to come up with a reason why that would be embarrassing; then he grins.

“‘Oh great and powerful Mr. Secretary of Everything, please don’t invade my country, here’s a Porsche’?” he says in his best terrified whimper.

Ford shrugs. “Something like that. _Are_ you hungry?”

“I could eat. You’re telling me about the eyepatch, though.” Stan can milk this more later.

“You spent who knows how long tricking people with a fake eyepatch and you’re not going to let me live with my real one in peace for a day?”

“Uh, no, definitely not,” Stan says. “Spill.”

Ford looks awkward again. Stan definitely gets the impression there’s a lot he’s leaving out about everything. “I got into a philosophical disagreement about genetic determinism,” he says. “It involved a fork, unfortunately, and I didn’t like my latest replacement eye. I’ve been working on a new one.”

“You lost an eye over a nerd argument? Wow, even despot you’s a dork.”

“Glad to see you’re sympathetic.”

“Hey, you still got three more body parts than most guys,” Stan says.

It takes a moment for Ford’s face to twitch, but eventually he can’t stop the small laugh. Stan smiles back, satisfied as the elevator stops and and the door open with a perky ding.

They’re now in what’s definitely a Ford space. It’s that kind of scientific mayhem that he says is secretly a system so he can claim superiority over Stan’s messes. The room is a large den-looking area, the walls an easy blue where they’re not covered with notes and whiteboards. The floor’s wood, but it’s got an extra hideous shag rug on it. Apparently this Ford’s still a loser who can’t decorate, but at least it’s not a terrifying white box.

“So this is where you rule the world from.”

“I don’t rule the world. We do still technically have a president, and there’s still plenty of countries we haven’t taken over yet.”

“Yet.”

Ford quirks his mouth to one side. “Well, yes,” he admits. “In any case, this is more of a thinking retreat.”

“Ooh, what’s the summer paranoia bunker like?” Stan asks.

Ford says, “It has a more open floor plan. Food?”

Four more hours, right? It’s the middle of the night, then, but Stan’s had a weird day. He’s hungry. “Sure, why not.”

“Find a couch somewhere in this if you can,” Ford says, and he leaves the room.

Stan shoves aside some file folders with titles like “Report on Living Conditions in New New Siberia” and “Universal Human Tracking System Grant Requests” and collapses into an armchair. It’s a nice chair, and it doesn’t strap him down and force things in his mouth, so he’s good. It kinda reminds him of the chair back home at the Shack, which he guesses probably doesn’t exist.

Stan’s going to have to ask about other things that may or may not exist. He’s not an idiot; if there’s a New New Siberia and a Lifelong Secretary of State, Defense, and Education, there’s a good chance he’s fucked other things up on the simultaneously smaller and more important scale.

When Ford comes back with a tray, Stan asks, casual as he can be, “Do the kids exist?”

“No,” Ford says firmly.

Which was the obvious answer, and the one Stan was expecting and braced for. He still winds up putting his head to his knees. It takes him embarrassingly long to unfold.

“Oops,” he says. “You know how?”

“For starters, Sherman never had a son.”

That’d do it. “Ah. Is he evil? Or in prison?”

“He’s religious,” Ford offers. “I honestly don’t know much about what happened with him after I went to college in our timeline, but in this one he’s fairly traditional and has only a daughter.”

Stan pokes at his brain soup. It’s not like he had anything to do with Shermie growing up, and most of what he did know he knew before the mind wipe. The kids hardly know him, he knows. “I got nothing, but if you wiped out Russia, I’m not surprised if people just turned out different.”

“Russia’s still there technically, and the kids haven’t been wished out of existence yet. ” 

“And they’re not going to be,” Stan says. He kicks some of the files he moved. Ford picks them up and moves them out of leg range.

“Food?” he says. He definitely using food to avoid talking about anything. Stan wants to tell him he’s noticed this, and that it’s pretty lame.

However, there’s also things Stan doesn’t want to talk about, so he says, “Sure.”

Food is not depression mush or electric goop, thankfully. It’s bacon, and Stan appreciates that from the bottom of his soul. He eats a plate stacked high with it, and Ford sits and neither looks at him directly nor does anything else.

“Where did you wake up this morning? Here?” Stan asks when the plate is empty.

“Hawaii. I’d have pulled you out of there sooner if I’d been closer. Jets only go so fast, even here.”

“Hawaii,” Stan says with a groan. “Evil you really is.”

“I was working, believe it or not.” 

“Sure.” Sad thing is, he probably was. Stan puts his empty plate back on the tray and slumps to the side. “You never told me what I did to wind up in there.”

Ford grimaces and takes a moment before saying, “You stabbed someone, Stanley.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” Ford takes the empty plate and tray and stands to walk back out of the room. The sound of running water follows soon after. Cleaning a plate in a temporary reality seems a little like a Titanic deck chair arrangement to Stan, but he figures it’s more avoidance. He can go along with that.

A moment’s exploration finds a reclining button on the armchair. Stan uses it and settles in to wait this out. He looks up at the ceiling fan and thinks about his wish. On the negative side, he undid the kids and turned Ford evil. The being trapped in an insane mental hospital because apparently he _stabbed someone_ wasn’t great either. Stan’s feeling nuttier after than that he was before, and “before” involved talking to a giant, floating baby.

On the plus side, he’s got two more previews. He just has to, he guesses, predict chaos? Maybe that’s not something Ford wants to help him do, but Stan knows two other people who breathe the stuff, and he plans on seeing them again soon. To hell with this new world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Dictator Ford by Grapefruitbomba](http://grapefruitbomba.tumblr.com/post/164339187466/other-ford-from-the-first-wish-based-on-the-fic)  
>  Complete with metal eyepatch and scowl. Please go see it on tumblr. It's gorgeous.
> 
> Rejected but accurate other warnings: Sorry about Russia. Okay, let's be real, Colombian prisons are factually way worse than this at least? Ford probably went to the same "How to Be Technically Not a Dictator" seminar as Walter Bishop. I couldn't figure out a smooth place to work in goatees; I apologize.
> 
> Also, thank you for all the amazing comments. T_T <3


	3. No Country for Gold Chains for Old Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bright side is that Stan is rich and has a younger boyfriend. The downside is Stan kills people, Ford's still a jerk, and Stan doesn't actually know what to do with a boyfriend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Killings just another kind of stealing, when you get down to it. Stan's still not happy. Ford's still kinda crazy.

When Ford comes back to the den again finally, Stan has to drag himself out of a lengthy doze to look at him. He’s got the coat and the black sweater off, just a dark grey shirt. Stan almost can’t believe it’s short-sleeved.

“You always did run cold,” Stan says, fond and too sleepy to bother pretending otherwise.

Ford pauses, kinda fumbles a step. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he snaps.

“What? You do,” Stan says, straightening from his slouch. “Even as a kid, you had that jacket you lived in for what, four years straight?”

Ford stares, then his shoulders drop suddenly, and he rubs his working eye. “Oh,” he laughs.

Stan groans and slumps back in the chair. If he had a pillow in reach, he’d throw it. “Unclench, would ya?”

“Sorry,” Ford says. He shrugs and perches on the arm of a couch otherwise covered in filing boxes. Stan stares at his bare arms for a moment before closing his eyes.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“Almost four. You might as well sleep.”

“Might as well,” Stan agrees.

He sleeps.

 

Stan opens his eyes, and he’s standing in the backyard of the Shack in his underwear.

Time Baby says, **“YOUR FIRST PREVIEW HAS ENDED.”**

“Oy,” Stan says, his voice gritty, his back achey, and his eyesight bad. That’s his normal, though. It’s comforting in its discomfort.

“I think we can safely say that was a failure,” Ford says. Stan looks over to find he’s scribbling furiously on a notepad he probably pulled from the not-black, only semi-dramatic trench coat. “Though even failures are learning experiences,” he says.

“What’re you doing?”

“Writing down some of the more impressive scientific advancements I remember from that reality. Some good might come of this, though my memory of specifics seems to be fading at an above average rate.”

Stan rolls his eyes, and says, “Glad you had a good time.”

“You don’t have to get snippy with me because your experiment failed, Stanley.”

“Snippy? You’re one to talk, Mr. Sec--”

 **“PINES BROTHERS,”** Time Baby says with a scrunched up face.

“Sorry, your Time Babyness,” Stan says quickly. Ford just keeps scribbling.

**“WHAT IS YOUR SECOND POSSIBLE WISH?”**

Not looking up, Ford firmly says, “He’s not making one.”

“Without speaking to my other two, more helpful, advisors first,” Stan continues, not missing a beat.

Ford says, “ _What?_ ”

“May I have my grandniece and grandnephew come out here? I want to pick their brains.”

“Stanley, you can’t be serious,” Ford says, but Time Baby goes ahead and does the whole summoning thing again. Mabel and Dipper Pines, you are summoned, yadda yadda.

While the three of them wait, Time Baby adds over Ford’s glaring and the sound of the squeaky toy, **“ACTUALLY, I DO DESIRE TO SPEAK WITH THEM MYSELF. THEY MAY HAVE INFORMATION I WANT.”**

Stan frowns. “Information? Uh, you’re not gonna hurt them are you?” Is he gonna have to punch a baby?

 **“NO. I ONLY WANT INFORMATION ABOUT A TIME FUGITIVE KNOWN AS BLENDIN BLANDIN,”** Time Baby says, and he clenches one chubby fist. His eyes and forehead spark again, smaller than his Bill-related outburst but enough to make Stan shuffle backwards a step.

“Ah,” Ford says, like he knows what that means as the kids come crashing out of the house in a pajamed mess.

“Time Baby!” Mabel yells in dramatic shock, and Dipper’s makes vague “Uh oh, oh boy” noises. They both come straight for Stan and stand between him and Time Baby. They’re definitely more in front of him than Ford, and neither of them is saying anything about Stan’s underwear. Stan makes himself not hug them.

“Did someone challenge you guys to Globnar?” Dipper asks Stan and Ford. “Did- oh boy, did you challenge _each other_?”

Mabel asks Time Baby, “What do you want with our grunkles?”

“No challenges, except maybe to my patience,” Ford says. Stan clenches his fists and crosses his arms.

 **“YOUR GREAT UNCLE STANLEY HAS DONE ME A GREAT SERVICE. I AM HERE TO REWARD HIM,”** Time Baby says. **“THOUGH I WOULD FIRST ASK YOU A QUESTION.”**

“Question?” Mabel and Dipper ask in almost unison.

 **“DO EITHER OF YOU HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT THE WHEREABOUTS OR WHENABOUTS OF THE TIME LOSER BLENDIN BLANDIN?”** Time Baby asks solemnly. **“I AM VERY UPSET WITH HIM.”**

“Oh,” Mabel says. She sounds like someone just told her sprinkles were outlawed.

“Why would we know that? The last either of us saw of him, he was helping Bill. Good riddance,” Dipper says. He puts one arm around Mabel, but his other arm goes behind his back. Stan watches as his fingers cross. “I hope you find him and throw him in Time Prison forever, the loser.”

“Uh, yeah,” Mabel adds, still kinda subdued. “Five forevers, even?” Stan’s really gotta get her to work on her outright lies. She’s radiating guilt, but at least it seems to go unnoticed by the target. She is talking to a baby.

 **“THAT IS THE LEAST I WILL DO,”** Time Baby spits, and he does also drool a little with it. It’s very sparkly drool.

“Good luck,” Dipper says.

Mabel says, “Good lu-- OH HEY! What is it you want with Stan? You said something about a reward, right? A reward for Stan? Our man Stan? Stanley the… moderately manly?”

“Hey, what do you mean ‘moderately’?” Stan asks.

“You’re mid-middle to upper-middle manly, depending,” Mabel says with confidence.

“Depending on what?”

“Whether you’re scratching a body part or not, mostly. But that’s good! There’s definitely such thing as too manly,” Mabel reassures him. “And you’re ahead of anyone else in the house except Gompers.”

“The _goat’s_ beating me?” Stan asks, considering cooking up goat tacos, while Dipper says, “Hey, I have three chest hairs, now. Did you factor in that?”

“Yes and yes.”

Stan and Dipper sigh together.

**“I WOULD NOT THINK DIPPER PINES WAS IN THE RUNNING.”**

“Okay, _ow,_.”

“Come on, Time Baby,” Mabel says. “It’s called being nice. Besides, he’s got the B.O. for it.”

Stan snorts. He even notices Ford quickly hide his mouth with his fist and clear his throat, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“We can change the subject back to Stan any time now,” Dipper says. Stan almost points to him and tells Ford that _that’s_ what snippy sounds like, but Dipper hasn’t done anything to deserve it. “He’s getting a reward, right?”

**“HE’S BEING GIVEN A TIME WISH FOR HIS PART IN DEFEATING BILL CIPHER.”**

“Whoa, seriously?”

“Oh my gosh, Grunkle Stan! What’re you gonna wish for? A rainbow kitty puppy? Infinite rainbow puppy kitties that shoot--”

“Actually, he’s trying to change the past,” Ford says, killjoying it up. “Like an idiot.”

Mabel and Dipper both say, “Oh.” They share a look that’s all eyebrows furrowing and raising, like they’ve suddenly developed the fabled twin speak. They’re the more likely pair for it, but Stan’s not convinced.

“What, uh, what’re you trying to change, Grunkle Stan?” Dipper asks, squeaky.

“I just tried changing the part where I broke his stupid science project,” Stan says. “And apparently that turned him evil.”

“I told you, Stanley. That was only one possible outcome. There are--”

“An exponentially large number of branches of the probability tree, and I’m fighting against chaos itself, yeah, I got it,” Stan says.

“And here I thought you weren’t listening to me.”

“Ignoring is not the same thing as not hearing,” Stan says.

“Stanley, you can’t do this again. You were tortured! The kids didn’t exist! I bypassed the foundations of democracy!”

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘again’?” Mabel asks.

Dipper asks, “What do you mean by ‘tortured’? And ‘didn’t exist’?”

Stan tells them the short version. He figures they don’t need specifics. He leaves out most of the finer details like torture, but Ford fills that in. Very helpful.

“Uh,” Mabel says, wide-eyed and open-mouthed when Ford gets to that. She and Dipper share a horrified look, then she comes up and grabs Stan’s hand. “Stan, did I ever tell you about the day I got Waddles?” she says with a nervous laugh.

“Only literally a hundred times since I had my mind wiped alone,” Stan says. He’s not kidding. Ford had counted.

“Okay, yeah, best day of my life, personally, but Dipper--”

“Look, are you two gonna help or not? If you’re not gonna help, you can go stand with Ford.”

“Grunkle Stan, wait. It’s also the day we met Blendin. You gotta hear this,” Mabel says.

“I really don’t,” Stan says, while Time Baby makes an angry burbling sound from the sidelines.

“You get to see what happens before you use up the wish?” Dipper asks thoughtfully.

“Three times. I just used up one.”

“And that one sounds super awful!” Mabel says. “Dipper, tell him about Wendy and the time machine.”

Dipper looks from Mabel to Stan. He stares hard at Stan like he’s looking for a clue in Stan’s face. Stan stares hard back, willing Dipper to get it.

“Maybe he just needs to do it himself,” Dipper says.

“What?” Mabel and Ford say together. Ford adds, “Not you, too, Dipper.”

“He has two more tries to do it without losing anything!” Dipper says. He’s still looking at Stan. His eyebrows are drawn together in sympathy.

“Exactly! This kid’s great,” Stan says.

“Dipper!” Mabel says, grabbing his arm.

Dipper frowns at her and says. “Mabel, he’s going to do it anyway. At least he can’t really damage anything if it’s temporary.”

“Uh, _himself_?” Mabel says.

“And maybe he’ll figure something out.”

“Or maybe he’ll spend a whole day getting brainwashed, beaten, tortured, or... _some other thing_ that no one needs, especially not someone still recovering from a mide wipe,” Ford says.

To Stan’s surprise, Dipper ignores him. He says, “I wouldn’t have listened to anyone telling me not to try, Mabel, and I only had half a day to regret things. Not a whole life.”

Stan swallows. This might be too much sympathy. “Anyway, I was hoping you two could help me figure out a better wish to make things right. If the science fair’s too far back and de-exists your dad, the fight over the portal at least keeps him.”

“Ford also found a better world where that fight didn’t happen,” Dipper says. “He wrote about it. He even called it ‘a better world.’”

Ford sputters, “D-don’t tell him that! Dipper, this is ridiculous!”

Dipper doesn’t immediately roll over and do what Ford says. Between that and the Time Wish, Stan’s willing to call this a day for miracles. “He had an institute of oddology and was world famous and everything.”

Mabel looks back and forth from Dipper to Stan. She looks so worried that Stan almost tells her nevermind, he’s wishing for infinite rainbow kitty puppies that fart glitter and kiss strawberry lip gloss, but then she sighs.

“You gotta wish to not be tortured this time,” she says.

“Also that the world doesn’t end, Ford isn’t in charge of any country, and you’re not in prison,” Dipper adds.

“And that we still exist at least mostly like ourselves, but if you want to give us superpowers, that’s okay.”

“No zombie or alien takeover, no vastly different US political systems, no tragically reduced human population, no water worlds with fish people--”

“Well, no fish people other than the ones we already have. And make sure everyone human is still human shaped, at least. And not possessed by anything.”

“Oh, yeah, no _Bill destroying reality_ ,” Dipper says urgently. “What happened with him in the last world?”

“The entire state of Oregon was under an anomaly quarantine, but the other me had never heard of Bill specifically,” Ford says. He still sounds teed off. “It was a temporary situation, so I wasn’t going to go check and let Stanley stay in that facility.”

Stan doesn’t let the little flicker of gratitude he feels for that sway him. “Okay, what else you two got?”

The list ends up some forty points long. Stan’s not sure how, “And ducks are still ducks” is gonna help, but that’s why he’s giving the kids this job. It’s their problem to worry about what else ducks might be, though he guesses they might actually be detectives.

“Right,” Stan says. “Ford, you’re welcome to sit this one out. Encouraged, even.” Stan almost demands it.

“Not a chance, Stanley.”

“Fine, suit yourself. I wish I’d taken the stupid journal away without shoving Ford in the portal by accident, and all those other things the kids added on top about no prison, nor dictators, no torture or stuff.”

 **“ABOUT TIME,”** says Time Baby, and there goes the lightning again.

 

Stan wakes up on a cloud. At least, it feels like a cloud. A moment of shifting reveals it’s a gigantic bed covered in satin and pillows soft enough to be made of ground up kittens. There’s a fur throw over the bed, and Stan’s already liking this world. He’s even got seven different pieces of gold jewelry on.

“Nice,” he says to himself.

“What?” a man calls from a different room. Stan looks up and around. The voice came from a doorway to the left. The whole room is huge and pretty dang nice; the the doorway looks like it might be a closet or a bathroom.

Stan… isn’t sure where he is again. Was that seriously not one of the things he had the kids specify for him?

“What, what?” Stan asks.

The door opens and a man pokes his head out. He’s not someone Stan knows from his original life. “Did you say something?” he asks.

Stan’s gonna roll with it and see how this plays out. “I said ‘nice’. I, uh, had a nice dream?”

The man smiles crookedly. He’s brown-skinned, probably in his forties. He’s got nice eyes and floppy greying hair. “That’s good, Stan” he says.

That man ducks back into the room. Running water sounds out a moment later. Definitely a bathroom.

Stan says, “Huh.” He looks down at the bed; it’s a king-sized, and Stan’s not in the center of it. He’s definitely more on the right side. The sheets look slept in to his left, and Stan’s not wearing clothing underneath the covers. Also, he’s tellingly sticky in ways he’s not normally sticky. “Huh,” he says again.

So this is different. It’s not that Stan is completely straight, really. It’s just… He’s really only been gay about Ford. Or mostly about Ford, where the problem isn’t the gay thing so much as the brother thing. There’s been, well, _interesting_ men before, sometimes on bikes, but Stan’s never actually done anything with any of them.

Stan swallows. It’s fine. Other-Stan clearly knew how to live, right? If this is where he lives. Or maybe it’s where the guy in the shower lives. Hell, maybe it’s both.

After debating with himself for a minute or so, Stan stands and looks around for clothing. This is when he notices he’s missing his left leg and has a fake one instead. He falls over back onto the bed with the total uncertainty what the hell it’s doing there.

“Fuck,” he says, examining it. Chalk another thing up to not specifying enough. After Ford’s eye, he should have known. “What the hell?”

It’s decent looking leg. It had fooled Stan for the moment he’d pulled the sheets up to check his dress-level, and it matches his other in general size and shape well enough. There is a definite plastic sheen to it, though, rather than the hairy mess of the real one.

Stan taps it. He even sorta feels the tapping, as he hears the hollow sound. The knee bends as he thinks about bending, so does the ankle. The whole thing is sealed onto Stan’s thigh by some mechanism he can’t figure out.

“Is it bugging you?”

Stan looks up and finds the man from the bathroom standing in the doorway, toweling his hair dry. He’s completely naked except for the towel on his head. He’s also giving Stan a worried frown.

“No, not really,” Stan says, and his voice breaks like he’s turned into Dipper all of a sudden. It’s not as though he’s not used to naked men. He’s spent whole swaths of his life as a naked man. “Just-- just checking.”

The man drapes the towel around his shoulders and walks up. Stan resists the urge to cover himself with the sheets. He gets the feeling that might be oddly out of character for this Stan.

The man drops to a crouch beside the bed and tugs gently on Stan’s leg to look at it himself. He runs his finger gently around the edge where real skin meets fake, and Stan bites the inside of his cheek. The man hums.

“Anything hurt?”

“Nope,” Stan squeaks.

The man feels around Stan’s thigh, pressing clinically, smoothing his fingers up along Stan’s skin. 

“Hmm, well, it does look like everything’s alright. No swelling,” the man says, and then he leans down and kisses Stan’s thigh.

Stan laughs loudly. “Everything’s definitely fine,” he says quickly. “Outta the way, I gotta piss.”

The man raises an eyebrow. “Good luck like that,” he says, with a glance at Stan’s cock, which is deeply confused but partially interested in these proceedings anyway.

“He doesn’t have to be in agreement with my bladder for my bladder to be the one I want to listen to,” Stan says.

The man lets out a rueful sigh. “Do as you like,” he grumbles and moves out of the way.

Stan makes a break for the bathroom, desperation driving him over his uncertainty about the fake leg. There, he shoves his face into one of the two fancy sinks set into marble countertops and turns on the water. He stays there while cold water pours over his head, and he thinks about the time he caught Toby massaging cantaloupes at the grocery store.

Eventually, he’s cold, shivering, and disgusted -- _seriously_ , Toby-- and that’s what he prefers to the alternative right now. The sound of water also actually made him need to pee, so he does use the bathroom as intended.

When he’s done, Stan’s stares at himself in the mirror, considering his pretty spectacular gold chains and his not that spectacular beer belly. This him is doing okay, it seems. The leg’s weird, though.

Stan feels something tickle his memory, about the leg. He thinks… he thinks it was a train? He’s not sure how a train was involved, but it feels like there was a train.

There’s a lot of feelings in this world that aren’t quite memories but also aren’t the blank emptiness of the last world. Stan feels like this is his home. The bathroom and its gold-colored towels and possibly-actually-gold sink fixtures feel like his. Even the naked guy in his room feels like his, much as Stan doesn’t know what to do with that.

“You’re acting very strange,” said possibly-still- naked man calls from the other side of the door.

“I’m fine,” Stan says.

“You’re lying to me. You know that never goes well… Unless you don’t know? Are you having another episode?”

“Episode? What am I, a television show?”

“Stan.”

“Do I sound like a guy having an episode?” Does he? Stan is kind of genuinely asking here. Episode? Of what?

The man sighs. He says, “No, you’re not yelling enough for that. You are still acting very strange. Is this about the children?”

Children? “Maybe,” he says.

“I’m sure they’ll get here fine. Besides, they’re young. If they’re upset, they’ll get over it,” the man says. “You’re doing them a favor, after all.”

“What if someone catches them?” Stan asks, to his own surprise. He can feel the shape of this. He’s not sure he likes the shape, but it’s there. He thinks he might have kidnapped the kids? Had someone kidnap them for him. Someone he knows from the last thirty years of being a pretty successful criminal.

So much for the “Maybe I won the lottery” thought.

“You think the men you hired would get caught moving a couple children through one state?” the man asks with a laugh. “You’re getting old and silly. Don’t let that idiot brother of yours worry you.”

“That brother of mine is pretty smart, Manny.” Oh, that’s his name. The possibly-still-naked Manny, hah.

“That brother of yours is half-senile, and it’s his own damn fault. If he even realizes the boy is gone, he might not even think of you, and if he does, that still doesn’t mean he’ll catch you at it.”

Dipper. Dipper is definitely “the boy”. Stan knows this like he knows there’s an electric razor in the drawer to his right and there’s a go-bag of medical supplies by Manny’s side of the bed. He doesn’t remember, exactly, but it’s a fact he knows.

“And the girl?” Stan asks, testing.

“Foster children disappear all the time. I should know,” Manny says casually. Stan opens the door finally to look at him. He’s wearing a red robe, though Stan doesn’t think there’s necessarily anything underneath it. It’s a nice robe.

Manny smiles at him. “Hello,” he says.

Stan can’t help smiling back. “Hey.”

“You look like a drowned rat.”

“Wow, thanks,” Stan says. It doesn’t actually sting, though. He feels teased but not condemned. The hand that comes up to flick his nose helps matters.

“There are uglier rats,” Manny says. “And personality is a factor. For example, your brother is a very ugly rat, twin or not.”

Two responses well up in Stan. Affection and defensiveness come up in almost equal measures, and Stan has to pick between saying, “Yeah, I’m definitely the handsome one” and “Wow, fuck you. Don’t talk shit about my brother.”

There are two lives swirling` in his head, and they’re both soupy. What Stan knows for sure is that he’s here, right now, with this man, and the right response is to agree.

“Yeah, I’m definitely the handsome one,” he says out loud. “‘s why you like me.”

“Predominantly,” Manny agrees. “You’re also the clever one. You shouldn’t worry about the children. They’ll be here this afternoon, I have no doubt.”

“Hopefully,” Stan says. They won’t be quite _his_ kids, but he’s sure they’ll still be pretty much themselves. That had been one of the conditions, afterall. “Did you have somewhere you need to be or are we eating breakfast?”

“I will have to go check on our unfortunate Mr. Tucker in a bit. He didn’t keep his stitches clean, the idiot, but that can wait until after breakfast.”

“The man’s probably in mourning,” Stan says. Tucker was the guy shot where no man wants to be shot. Stan recalls this with a sympathetic cringe. “Cut him some slack.”

“He is apparently very despondent, but as much as I pity him, he’ll lose more than that if he doesn’t take care.” Manny waves his hand at Stan’s nakedness. “ _You_ take care and I will see what Marta has waiting for us downstairs.”

Stan yells after him as he leaves the room, “If there’s bacon, you’d damn well better leave me some this time!”

“¡No entiendo la palabra que estás usando!” Manny calls from the hallway, sing-song. “¡Huelo el tocino!”

“You’re not funny!” Stan yells. “Not funny at all!”

He gets no response. Stan sighs, and he… he’s not mad. He is a little amused, despite what he said.

“Oh boy, Stan” he mutters, feeling wobbly. “What did you do?”

He doesn’t know how to answer himself. Things swim in and out of his mind, and it’s like someone dumped a bowl of beef stew in with his usual chicken soup of a mind. Things float to surface and he’s got to decide what came from where.

A shower, he figures, will at least get him less of a mess on the outside. He’s not sure if this is normal post-gay sex sticky or what. He’s also not thinking about what exactly he did to get sticky where he is.

That’s a lie. He’s definitely got some mental images, but they’re very much not from the normal soup, and Stan’s trying to cling to that.

He stands in the really fancy shower with four different water sprays all aimed at his back. It’s heaven. How’d he get here?

Thirty years ago, Ford summoned him. Like he didn’t doubt Stan would come, even after all that time. Why should he? Stan’s always been there for him, even when Ford doesn’t want him. That’s the same in both worlds.

_“Take this book, get on a boat, and sail as far away as you can, to the edge of the earth! Bury it where no one can find it!” Ford shouted like a maniac._

_And Stan… took the journal. It felt like chewing off his own limb, but he did it. He said, “I do this, fine. But don’t ever call me for anything ever again, you asshole.”_

_“I won’t. I can’t risk knowing where you took it.”_

So Stan took it, but because he wanted to be an asshole and he couldn’t stomach getting on a boat like that, he just traveled south. By car. He… left it somewhere. Stan honestly can’t remember where exactly. He was pretty drunk from the moment he left Gravity Falls. Somewhere in Baja, at least. It was hidden, and that was done, and Stan had to really, finally believe Ford wasn’t ever going to call him back into his life. He was drinking too much; he shouldn’t have been out driving. It was lucky the train only clipped the corner of the Stanleymobile, lucky the hospital was nearby.

That’s not where he met Manny, though. He’s foggy on where and when that happened, but it wasn’t that night. He did meet someone with a gut wound in the emergency room. Talked, high on something good from the doctors who couldn’t save his crushed leg, using the Spanish he knew from previous travels.

The guy was dying. Gut wounds were nasty, and he needed someone to do him a final favor. Stan couldn’t say no to a dying man’s last request, especially from someone who asked nicer than Ford did.

Take something, deliver it somewhere, tell some someones something. Who cared if the thing was filled with guns? Who cared if Stan’s first replacement leg was little more than a peg and every step hurt like hell?

The guy had been someone’s brother and someone’s nephew. Those someones had wanted payback. They were happy to reward whoever would help them get it. Stan had heard the dying man’s confession of who’d shot him, and… Well, killing was just another kind of stealing, and there was something to be said for family that loyal. It wasn’t like he had anything else going on or would ever have anything else going on.

He worked with them a few more times, for different things, then there were some other guys who needed some help, then some annoyingly stuck-up cowboy guys in Arizona, and it just kept going until Stanley Pines became a man to call if you needed help getting rid of someone.

“Damnit, Stan,” Stan says to himself. “You’re a piece of work.”

He washes everything everywhere with soap that smells like money. It doesn’t really make him feel clean, but he lets himself enjoy the water pressure massaging his spine, and he tells himself that it’s fine. It’s all fine. He can just enjoy this world for the day, and then not make this wish. He doesn't have to be a killer for real.

Sure, he’s been a criminal for fifty-odd years. Sure, he’s conned people, fought them, run screaming from mobs, been thrown into car trunks. He’s hurt people when they’ve hurt or threatened him. He thinks he even shot a guy once, but that was in the shoulder. Stan’s pretty sure that’s survivable.

Does killing a triangle demon count? Dinosaurs? Zombies? Even if it does, that’s different than going out to kill someone who isn’t after you. Killing someone you don’t even know just because someone else you don’t know pays you is, like, objectively wrong. Mabel and Dipper would be horrified. Ford’s probably gearing up the “I told you so”. Stan doesn’t want to be that guy.

...Even if that guy has a great house and gold everything and a pretty good-looking doctor boyfriend and can apparently just have people steal the kids for him now.

It’s a little tempting. It’s not like Stan ever gets his hands directly dirty these days. He mostly just sits back and lets other people do it for him when it needs doing. He even has things like property and a stockbroker putting that blood money to work, so he could probably just stop working all together... 

“Knock it off,” Stan tells himself, and he gets out of the shower. The towels are all soft as sin, and Stan dries off with one, wraps one around his waist, another around his head.

Out in the bedroom, there’s gold slippers and a gold robe nearby. Stan slips into them. Everything is heavenly and doesn’t smell like milk.

The hallways are similarly classy. The grand staircase is something out of a princess movie. In the dining room, there’s food laid out by a professional cook, and Manny is laid out in a fancy chair, eating bacon with his fingers and reading something on a tablet.

“You’d better have left me some,” Stan says.

“There’s enough for five; I couldn’t eat it all if I wanted. Though I suppose the dog could have helped.” Manny whistles.

Stan turns to the sound of nails clicking on tiles and watches a large poodle come trotting into the dining room. The dog noses him briefly before heeding the call and going to eat bacon out of Manny’s hand. It does so daintily.

“Huh,” Stan says. He wouldn’t have figured himself for a poodle guy, but…

_“They’re one of the smartest breeds, Stan,” Manny said, holding a puppy like it was a frickin’ baby. “And if you say no, I’m leaving you for her anyway.”_

Apparently he’s easily convinced. Stan takes a seat across from Manny, finds that the plate in front of that chair is already stacked with bacon, eggs, tortillas, and chili sauce enough to give a lesser man a heart attack on the spot.

“This is beautiful,” Stan says. 

“I do like this new cook,” Manny says mildly. “The faster she kills you with heart disease, the sooner I inherit.”

“Who says you’re in the will? I’m leaving everything to the dog,” Stan says easily. He begins to eat, and if he moans a little, no one comments.

Stan’s on his second plate --which does get him a raised eyebrow-- when a phone begins ringing somewhere. He looks at Manny expectantly with his fork still in his mouth.

“No, no, please,” Manny says sarcastically. “Keep eating. The dog’s only going to live another ten years tops anyway.” He gets up to answer, though, and he pats Stan on the shoulder as he passes.

Stan figures Manny’s alright. He keeps eating, feeds bits of the meal to the dog. Stan wants to say her name is“Cocoa” though he’s not totally sure about that. He thinks they mostly call her “the dog” either way. She’s nicely obedient and worshipful, he finds. Those are some nice qualities in a pet. She doesn’t even chew on clothing or anything.

“Stan?” Manny says, poking his head into the dining room. He looks angry.

“What? She was giving me puppy eyes; you fed her so--”

“Your brother is on the phone,” Manny says. “And not the one that’s almost tolerable.”

“Oh,” Stan says. He considers saying, “Fuck ‘em.” He know he can’t make this wish. Ford can save the lecture, but something from earlier has been sticking in his brain in a bad way.

“Ugh, fine,” Stan says, and he sets his fork down with regret.

“I will hang up on him for you, if you’d prefer. You got pissy when I last did that without asking, though.”

“I don’t get pissy,” Stan says, but he gets up and follows his vague memory to the phone anyway. Manny hangs around just off to the side. “What is it, Ford?” Stan says, picking up the gold-covered handset.

“Stanley! Where are the kids?” Ford says urgently.

Stan responds by asking, “Why was Mabel in foster care--”

“Stanley, that’s not--”

“--but Dipper was with you?”

“I--, Look, it was just-- Do you not remember again?” Ford asks. He sounds worried and defensive.

"No, no, I want to hear you say this," Stan says, aware Manny's giving him an odd look. He’s got to stay in character here.

"I... I have legal custody of Dipper, Stanley. Through the Anomaly Containment and Protections Act," Ford says carefully.

Stan states at his gold flecked wallpaper and says, "At your stuck-up little institute. Because of a stupid birthmark," with awful, dawning certainty. It's all floating to the surface of his mind.

"It's not stupid, Stanley, and that’s exactly the kind of comment--"

"It is stupid if it lets you take him from his family, Ford. It is if you won't let them have him back, so his parents try to take him back, and you have them put in jail. Then their not-anomalous daughter isn't interesting enough, so you just shunt her off to foster care, you... you _piece of shit_."

"...Stanley, you do realize this is an alternate reality, right? That wasn't me. I wouldn't do that,” Ford says gently. Now he just sounds hurt.

Stan sighs and rubs his face. He doesn't apologize; because he has an audience that expects him to be fighting with his insane brother, he can't. Instead he says, "Yeah, well, being a killer doesn't suit me either, but here we are."

"Stanley, is your... Is that man still listening?"

"Obviously," Stan answers. "Look, I'm sorry you lost track of part of your misfit collection. Really. That's awful. I'm sure wherever he is, though, he's better off."

"Do you have them? As long as I know they're safe, I don't care where they are for the day."

"Not exactly," Stan admits.

"Damnit, Stanley!"

"Don't you yell at me; they're only running from you because you're an asshole. What happened to your ‘better world’, huh?"

"Again, this is only one possible world out of--"

"I know that!"

"--many, and we wouldn't even be here if-"

Stan hangs up with a slam and puts his forehead to the wall. Fucking hell. How’d he screw this world up, too?

Time passes as Stan does a good job beating himself up in his head. Eventually, something wet and cold presses to his hand. Stan pets the dog absently and pulls away from the wall to look at Manny.

"Brothers, huh?" Stan says.

"Who needs them?" Manny says with the unhappy smile of someone who Stan remembers now got left by his own father and brother as a kid. He got sick of the fosters in Arizona, ran away, ran out of options, joined the wrong side of the law, wound up as a scrawny but smart teen hired to hold a shitty gun and be fodder during a hit.

It was the smarts that mattered. He ended up saving Stan’s life at one point, holding a wound closed, and Stan thanked him by giving him some money and telling him to get the fuck out before someone threw him in a trunk or shot him. Fifteen years later, he turned back up with a medical degree, said he wanted to thank Stan for giving him that first help. Things... happened.

Stan can't feel that bad about it, even with a slightly more intact conscience than his counterpart. Manny's the closest to a morally good thing that's happened in this life, far as he can tell. Even if he does spend his days mostly sewing up bad guys Stan hires, now.

"You wanna go back upstairs?" Stan asks, uncertain what he wants the answer to be, but at least half of him is definitely hoping the answer is "yes".

Manny smiles and says, "Oh, now that I don't have time you're interested? Typical Stan Pines."

"Heh, sorry."

"Besides, I don't like you in bed after your brother makes you angry," Manny says with a heartfelt sigh. "You get weird. It’s no fun."

Stan swallows the small bit of panic that summons. He's somehow reminded of Carla McCorkle of all people saying something similar before the timeline split, decades ago, and that didn't end well.

_“When you mope about your brother, I feel like I might as well not exist,” she said, about a week before she left him for a fucking hippie. “It’s no fun having a relationship with you when you’re longing to be somewhere else half the time.”_

"I _am_ sorry," Stan says now. He puts some real heart into it.

Manny frowns. "And you're already weird enough today as it is. If you weren't so coherent, I'd say you were --"

"I'm not having an episode. Promise,” Stan says. It might not actually be true, admittedly. Here, he’s got one of those mental fuck ups with a name full of letters. Killing does that apparently. The him from here might have started off already in something before Stan’s memories of the original timeline butted in. It’d explain why his memories are weird, like they’re coming from far away through a fog of panic.

“I have to go,” Manny says, reluctantly. “But I should be here this afternoon when those children arrive.” He comes up and wraps his arms around Stan, kisses San’s shoulder through the robe. “I’ll call later to make sure you’re alright.”

Stan feels warmed. “You don’t have to, Doc. I’m fine.”

“Let me be the judge of that. I am your doctor in residence, after all.” He lets go, though he smacks Stan’s ass before he heads back upstairs to dress. 

Stan laughs nervously to himself and still doesn't know how he wants to handle that. A man should probably face most of his sexual crises before his sixties, because even with part of him perfectly good with this, the other part’s having a small freak out. The thing about spending most of his life in love with his brother was that he never had to face any real possibility of sex with him. It could all be vague and driven by longing and need in his fantasies, Ford pressed against him, wanting him back; who cared about the specifics? 

Here, Stan’s acutely aware of specifics, mechanics, and things like waking up with remnants of another man’s come between his thighs.

“You’re too old for this,” Stan tells himself, and he goes to finish his breakfast. Eating’s something he knows how to do in any world.

When he’s done stuffing himself half-sick, Stan wanders around the house. It’s stupidly beautiful. He has memories of making sure it got decorated right and of Manny eventually throwing his hands up and saying, _“Fine, we’re doomed to be tacky, I see. Let’s do_ everything _in gold.”_

The dog follows Stan along as he goes, and when he’s done looking through all the rooms, he takes her out into the backyard. It’s not very green, which he guesses is the problem with southern California. Well, one of the problems. There’s cacti and tiled patios, mostly.

Stan also shot someone in the head, off to the left there. Some asshole tried to break in and kill him in revenge for a hit. Stan hosed his blood off the tile while Manny sighed and said at least the nutrients would be good for the plants they did have.

Stan heads back inside. The dining room is clear, so he goes into the kitchen. The cook’s a small, stern woman named Marta who’s already making lunch it looks like. She hardly pays him any attention, just keeps cooking the better part of cow with determination.

“There’s two kids coming here this afternoon,” he tells her while he pours himself some juice. He’s not sure if he or Manny’s told her this.

“It’s why I cook extra,” she says, waving at all the meat. 

“It’s, uh, it’s also their birthday,” he says, feeling kinda shitty he didn’t say anything when they came out to help with Time Baby. “Can we make them something sweet? I’ll help,” he offers.

“I have a cake in the oven,” Marta says firmly. She points at one of the three ovens, and then waves him out of the kitchen like she’s totally unafraid of the killer who pays her. Stan likes a woman like that.

Around one in the afternoon, Manny calls. Stan pauses the soap he’s distracting himself with to get the phone.

“Mr. Tucker is going to die,” he says angrily when Stan answers. “He certainly doesn’t have to, but he’s being melodramatic and refuses to be involved in his own recovery. I told the sister to have him committed but she seems to think he might be better off wasting away over his genitals.”

“Pity the man,” Stan tells him solemnly.

“I rather think as a gay man I have an even stronger love of cocks than he does, but I still don’t see the point in dying over one.”

Stan coughs, swallows, and changes the subject. “Where are you headed now?”

“I have a couple more people I want to visit, mostly checking on stitches. How are you doing?”

“Ready to storm the kitchen and seize the food being cooked in there. I think I can take down the old lady. It smells that good. Still not having a breakdown, I swear.”

After he hangs up, he finally goes and dresses properly. This him has a closet full of suits, and he ends up picking stylish tweed one that he tops off with all the gold chains he can bear to wear and enough rings on enough fingers to qualify as built in brass knuckles. These kids don’t know him, and he’s going to look good when they meet him.

He goes and sits in the foyer, twiddling his thumbs. Marta eventually brings him a sandwich and a glass of something sweet. She looks at him like she’s surprised with his behavior but in a pleasant way.

A buzzer goes off around three. The video feed beside the door shows a black car waiting at an iron gate out front, and Stan presses a button to open it. He walks out onto the front steps to watch the car pull up and to pose casually against the railing.

It’s Ford who gets out of the back. Stan stares.

“What the hell?” he says.

Ford frowns at him. “What are you wearing?” he asks.

“Clothes. Nice clothes. I look great.”

“You look like a nineteen-seventies porn producer, Stanley,” Ford says.

“How would _you_ know? Besides, you just look like shit.” Specifically, Ford looks exhausted, scruffy, and like someone who should probably lay off the coffee before his eyes spontaneously burst or his heart pops. It’s a kind of manic that can’t be achieved in just a day. It’s a preexisting condition.

Half-senile, Manny called him. Stan wonders how that happens.

“I met a man who made cursed pornography that forced people to ‘find Jesus’,” Ford says, waving his hand. “That’s beside the point. Where are the kids?”

“I told you I don’t have them. Weren’t you in Gravity Falls?”

“I called you on the way to the Portland airport.”

“You didn’t have to do that. We’re here for a day, Ford.” Stan throws his hands up. A ring goes flying off somewhere. Oops. “The kids aren’t even going to remember this, and I have it under control anyway.”

“You kill people here, Stanley! Forgive me for making sure--”

“Hey, if I can’t give you crap for _taking over the world_ in some reality, you can’t give me it for this. Besides, at least I just kill strangers who’re already in the killing business. I don’t lock up my fucking family. Again.”

“You say that like it’s the worse thing!”

“It is! It’s so bad, you drove a little girl who once made me hold a funeral for a snail I stepped on by accident to track down the family hitman for help dealing with you. I almost did go ahead and just have you shot when she told me what happened!” Stan yells, bellowing it as the memory becomes more solid and the anger fires up again. 

He barely even knew anything about Shermie’s son or his kids before Mabel somehow got a call to him, but what Ford was doing was against every principle Stan still had. You weren’t supposed to turn on family or kids like that.

“What the hell were you thinking, Ford?”

Ford throws his hands in the air over his head. He looks like an insane bird trying to fly. “You kill people!” he shouts. “I still don’t see how I’m the bad guy here!”

“No, you wouldn’t see, would you? You wouldn’t know love or loyalty if they _bit you on the ass!_ ” Stan shouts, loud as his old lungs can. He realizes he’s only barely holding in tears, and that makes him spin around and stomp back into the house.

Marta the cook is on the phone in the foyer, speaking rapid, worried Spanish when he comes in and slams the door. She doesn’t stop as Stan slides down to sit against it.

“--su hermano gritaban en los- ...Sí. Sí, Señor,” she says. She’s looking at Stan with a mix of pity and fear. Stan can distantly hear Manny’s voice from the receiver. Marta walks up to Stan cautiously and holds out the phone. Stan stares at it with its gold casing. 

It’s not real. Or, if it’s real, it’s not permanent. He’s only here for a day. He only has Manny and this house and the cook and the dog for a day but also is only a semi-retired murderer for a day. Mixed bag there. The only thing real and permanent here is Ford, and Stan can’t have him any day in any world.

“I can’t,” he tells Marta, voice crackling. She tries pushing the phone at him, and he pushes it away. “No puedo.”

She pulls back the phone. Stan listens to her apologize to Manny, but he tunes her out after. He puts his head to his knees and closes his eyes.

This was so stupid. Stan should have known none of this would work out. Not because chaos theory or whatever else Ford is going to be smug about when Stan has to admit it in front of him. No. It just isn’t ever going to work out so long as Stan’s the one doing it. Stan can’t get anything fucking right. Might as well name it the Law of Stan Pines and submit a paper on it to a science journal.

“You’re an idiot,” he tells himself.

He stays that way, sitting against the door and generally feeling like hell for a long time. It’s only when the door tries to open that he looks up.

“If you’re Ford, you can go suck a cactus,” he says.

“Stan Pines, open this fucking door,” Manny says.

Stan sighs and scoots out of the way without getting off the floor. The door opens and Manny comes in looking harried and worried, and Stan is sorry. He’s sorry he put this man, however real or not, through this terrible day with him. Sorry for the cook and the dog, too. They don’t deserve this. They’re alright.

When Manny reaches out to touch him though, Stan says, “Don’t.”

“Stan--”

“Don’t.”

“...Fine. Your brother left, ostensibly. I called Bowder, though. I told him to take the children across the border instead. I assume the house is being watched.”

No kids today, then. The cake’s going to go to waste. It’s the smart thing to do, from the point of view of Ford being a mad scientist collecting odd kids and the whole government sanctioned part. Mexico isn’t Ford’s territory. That’s where Stan-that-lived-here was going to relocate the kids, anyway; he just figured he could take them across himself.

“Thanks,” Stan says, even though it doesn’t really matter.

Manny sits down in front of him, staring. Stan doesn’t look at him. He can’t.

After a long stretch of silence, Manny says, “You never let me say what I really think about this.”

“It doesn’t matter.” None of it does. Stan’s biting back telling him that he’s not even real.

“It matters to me, so let me say it. I hate your brother. He’s a cold man. His priorities aren’t mine, and I don’t understand the things he cares about--”

Even now, Stan feels defensive of Ford, and that makes him feel more pathetic. “You can stop.”

“--but I still understand him better than you.”

That makes Stan look up. “Come again?”

Manny shakes his head, furious. “I don’t understand why you do this to yourself. It’s like watching an otherwise sane man repeatedly stab himself in the stomach. Do you think it won’t hurt this time?”

Helplessly, Stan says, “He’s my brother.”

“You don’t do this over your other brother. You’ll tell me this is a twin thing, maybe? I won’t believe you then either,” Manny says. “Stan, I love you, but…”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Stan asks, horrified. Seriously, he can’t even get through a day with someone another him spent over ten years with?

“What? No, don’t be absurd. I’m not throwing away a life over one shitty day. I won’t even over a series of shitty days all tied to that man. But for the love of god, Stan, please let go of whatever it is you think he’s going to give you.”

Stan shuts his mouth and looks at the tiled floor. He can’t think of anything to say to that that can be said. There isn’t anyone he can say, “I love him like a brother but also I’m in love with him, and he doesn’t even love me as a brother as much as I love him as a brother, and it’s driven me crazy for decades” to. Even if this world is going to be over in, what, fourteen hours, saying it would just get him fourteen hours of being the sick freak.

“Oh, Stan,” Manny sighs eventually. He stands up and walks away, somewhere else in the house. Stan doesn’t get up to follow, though maybe a better man would.

It’s getting dark out when Marta comes in quietly and sets a plate of pulled beef and rice on the tile. She even brings him a beer. Stan doesn’t say anything to her, but eventually the smell’s too good and the pull of beer is too strong. He eats and drinks. It makes him feel a little more human, if only because humans need to shit and piss and that’s the end result of that. He has to get up off the floor to find another bathroom then.

When he’s done, he walks around the house. His leg does actually hurt now, but it’s not that bad. Marta’s packing up all the food in containers and shoving it into the giant fridge. The dog’s sprawled out in the hallway outside the kitchen with a cow bone. Manny’s in the living room on the fancy sofa, watching a show.

Stan stands in the entrance and says, “I’m sorry.”

“Since when do you apologize this much?” Manny asks. He sounds rough and his voice is quiet. Stan thinks he maybe hasn’t been as good to the guy as he should be, even before today and all this memory bullcrap. “Have some beer and cake.”

The coffee table’s got a six pack and a giant chocolate cake on it, both of them about a third gone. Stan does as he’s told and sits in an armchair to the left of the sofa.

There’s a rerun of Ducktective playing on the large high-def TV. Stan falls asleep in the chair.

 

Stan opens his eyes. Underwear, backyard, kids, leg, giant floating baby, brother-- all there.

“Grunkle Stan?” Mabel asks. She’s holding his hand, and she looks miserable. Stan reaches up and wipes at his own face.

Time Baby says, **“YOUR SECOND PREVIEW HAS ENDED.”** Even the frickin’ baby with the nightmare voice somehow sounds pitying.

“Can we be done with this now?” Ford asks quietly. Stan looks at him long enough to see him pinching his nose, but he can’t stare at him for long.

“You can,” Stan says with a voice even worse than his normal one. “I got one more thing I want to see.”

“Oh for fu--”

“Just let me see! Time Baby, I know what I want to try next,” Stan says over him, saving him the coin for the swear jar, at least.

**“GOOD. WHAT IS THIS LAST TRIAL?”**

Stan swallows, and before he can stop himself, he says, “I wish-- I wish I’d been able to stop loving my brother when he cut me out of his life, and I don’t want Ford to come along this time.”

Ford makes a choking noise.

 **“VERY WELL,”** Time Baby says. 

The lightning starts, and then in that last moment Dipper shouts, “But he _does_ want me to come this time!”

Stan doesn’t get the chance to say, “No I frickin’ don’t!”

 

Stan wakes up and stares at a ceiling fan. When that gets boring, he turns over and stares at Carla.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rejected Other Warning: Terrible taste in decorating is a family trait. 
> 
> Welp, that got longer than I meant it. Also, I realized far too late that there's another Disney show with a Manny, and by that time, it was too funny to change it. Also also, my Spanish is still as remedial as Stan's Chaos Theory, no matter what Duolingo claims. If you spot somewhere I messed up there, please let me know.
> 
> Thanks for the comments last chapter! You're lovely, smart people. <3


	4. Florida Stan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan's happily married.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Absent someone's help, there's kinda only two ways things could have played out with Bill and Ford thirty years ago, and this is not the one where Bill takes over. Temporary death. Violence to toasters. Made-up name for Dipper and Mabel's dad.

Stan pushes a piece of gray hair that’s fallen out of Carla’s flowery sleeping cap back under it. She doesn’t wake up, and Stan doesn’t do anything else that might make her. Instead he rolls out of bed carefully and pads out of the bedroom.

He walks down the stairs to the shared office behind the storefronts, where their main business computer’s set up. Carla’s got a laptop she uses to keep up with all her girlfriends and customers on the MyFace, but Stan sticks to the desktop if he needs anything. Now he fires it up, pokes around, and then stares at the search engine. He’s not sure what’s gonna come up, and that’s worrying. What happens if you have a preview of a world where you don’t exist or are dead or something? Do you spend a day in limbo? Do you spend a day rotting in a coffin?

Stan’s got to find out, even if Dipper’s a fucking idiot.

He pecks out “Jason Sherman Pines” in the search box. His nephew’s MyFace is the first result; Stan clicks through. The profile pic is him in his nerd glasses hugging Dipper and Mabel. They all look happy and healthy. The most recent status update is from yesterday afternoon, checking into a pizza place “With family!” A little further back than that is, “Picking son up from computer camp,” and “Mabel’s home from art camp. The house has never been so sparkly yet damp.” 

So Dipper’s probably fine in this world. Stan thinks he might be doomed to a little more helpless nerdiness than a summer of weirdness in Gravity Falls let him have, though. Stan relaxes back in the desk’s squeaky wheelie chair. He keeps meaning to replace it, really, but it’s still a fine chair and it’s not like he minds the squeaking much.

This world is… okay. Stan’s got the full of it, easily laid out in his head without magic or tech or trauma screwing with the memories. It starts out the same, even the first few days after he got kicked out, sleeping in the Stanleymobile, crashing at Carla’s a couple times till her dad caught them. Only, instead of a strange, yo-yo mess of clinging to Carla because he adored her and pushing her away because he had to find some way of getting back to his family, some plan, some scheme, Stan just… Dated her. Went steady. Took her dancing and never ended the night muttering about winning back his place in the family.

Yeah, he was upset for a while, but there came a day that Stan just said, “If they don’t want me, fine. Do you?”

And Carla said, “Yes, Stan, I think I do.”

Her dad got him a job with his construction crew. Carla never left him for a laidback hippie after getting tired of his moping back and forth. Stan never went crashing across the globe looking for a way to get rich. Three years in, Stan realized he was supposed to propose. Mrs. McCorkle’s hints like, “Well, someday I’ll be a grandmother…” and “When are you finally going to propose to my daughter like a _goshdarn gentleman_ , Stan Pines?” helped.

So Stan saved up for a ring, wore a nice outfit, took Carla dancing, and proposed. He said they could have a nice life together there, that he was doing alright in her dad’s construction crew, that her parents had helped him find a little apartment to share with her not far from theirs. He said she’d make a great mom.

Carla turned him down. She hopped in a van of girls who were going to follow a stupid band across country as dancers. She left a letter for him that said, “Much as I love you, I’m not spending my life in Jersey. Love, Carla”

Two years later he got a postcard from her that read, “You shouldn’t spend your life in Jersey either. Come see a show. Love, Carla” 

He found her in Texas. They got married a few weeks later in New Mexico. They didn’t find a permanent residence until two years after that, and about six years after that, they separated because they were driving each other crazy in their tiny first apartment Florida.

A month later, she showed back up and said, “Damnit, Stan, I just miss you,” and that was finally that.

They got a cat. The cat ran away. They got a tiny dog, and Carla started grooming the poor little bastard like a show dog. She got good enough at it over a few years that some of her coworkers and customers at the diner she waitressed for asked her to style their dogs, and now Carla’s Pooch Parlor is over twenty years old.

Stan runs an adjacent appliance repair shop. They do okay, though Stan’s getting fed up to his ears of being asked if he fixes broken phone screens. He doesn’t. There’s a sign in the window that says he doesn’t. Look up from the broken phone long enough to notice it. Come back if you need your fancy English vacuum fixed or you can’t figure out how to descale your single-serve coffee machine.

They’re on a couples bowling team. Carla plays bingo. Stan plays poker. Carla teaches Sunday school and doesn’t mind Stan’s never found Judaism or Christianity or any other religion again. He’s not even sure she believes in anything so much as just feels close to her mom when she does it. They go dancing most Friday nights.

They have two dogs, both grandsons of that first one. Carla thinks they can squeeze one more generation into their lives before they kick the bucket, and she’s been sizing up her clients for a suitable match. Stan’s pretty sure it’ll be Roberto who’s the lucky dog since Geraldo’s an idiot. The poor little dumbass sometimes gets lost underneath a blanket and cries like the world’s ending.

It’s a pretty good life except for the part where Ford died thirty years ago.

Stan only heard about it two years after the fact because Mrs. McCorkle ran into his mom at the grocery store and got stuck waiting for the register to get fixed.

Stan went home to Jersey once, just to tell his mom her was sorry for her. They spent one awkward afternoon in a diner while his father was running errands. She asked him why he never tried to come back home or go see his brother, and he told her no one asked him to.

It wasn’t until waking up this morning that Stan ever considered what he could have done differently. Even now, he’s on the fence about it. He’s got this good life that only came from letting go of Ford completely and letting Carla come and go when she needed to.

Then he’s got this weird, crazy, messed up life of clinging to people till they hated him and he wrecked himself. Lesson learned, he guesses. Fifty years too late.

He doesn’t know what the fuck to think of Ford dying, though. His mom told Mrs. McCorkle that Ford had an accident while mountain climbing. She told Stan that Ford lost his mind. Apparently he’d been found by a lumberjack out in the woods with his head cracked from a fall and a book full of insane scribbling, mostly washed away by rain.

If Stan had to guess now, he’d say that fucking triangle kept driving him crazy, and Ford didn’t have anyone he could trust, not even an estranged criminal brother he knew would come crawling for him. Ford had probably been trying to hide one of those damn journals himself. Stan has no way of knowing whether it really was an accident. He doesn’t know why this Ford never even asked for him to come.

It doesn’t matter. It’s not like he’s sticking around this world. All Stan wanted when he made the wish was to know what else he could have had, and now he does. It’s fine. No harm done. It’s _fine._

Stan goes to put some clothes on. He’s going to have to open the storefront in a while, and Carla will probably be getting up soon. He can just have a normal, nice day with his nice, only slightly odd wife and his perfectly wholesome business in… admittedly pretty insane Florida but you can’t have everything.

Carla’s awake when Stan goes upstairs, taking her hair out of its overnight curlers. Stan kisses her on the cheek, and she grumbles at him. She’s never been and never will be a morning person.

Stan gets dressed in a shirt with palm trees on it and a pair of bermuda shorts. He doesn’t own any gold chains here, only sorta has one suit. He wears open-toed sandals a lot because it’s Florida and that’s what you do. He’s ready faster than Carla because he doesn’t have to do anything special with his hair to make customers think he’ll be good at fixing a vacuum.

“French roast or Columbian?” he asks before going down. Here Colombia’s just a country that coffee comes from.

Carla yawns and says, “Whichever’s fastest.”

“They take the same time, Carla,” Stan says.

“Then I _do not care,_ Stan.”

Stan puts his hands up and backs out of the room dramatically, like there’s a bear growling at him in the bedroom. Carla snorts and rolls her eyes.

He makes the French roast and opens his storefront. There’s a woman with a poodle waiting outside Carla’s, and Stan lets her come and hang out in his side of things until Carla’s ready. The poodle’s a tiny little twerp, not much like the giant one from when Stan was a hitman instead of a guy who fixes toasters. Stan gives it friendly pat and lets the woman tell him, at length, about how her sister’s coming to visit tomorrow, and how the house and the dog and the kids and everything has to be utterly perfect or the sister’s going to make little _comments_.

Stan doesn’t tell her, “Fuck your sister,” and he doesn’t tell her, “Don’t worry! This reality won’t exist tomorrow, so you won’t even have to face her. Go rob a bank and sleep with someone more handsome than your husband.”

“You’ll be fine. The dog’s cute enough to make up for a lot,” is what he does say. She appreciates it, he thinks.

When Carla comes down, the woman starts off again about the urgency of the matter. Carla calms her down with the voice she uses on the dogs and takes her over to the right shop. Behind her back, she makes a _yikes_ face at Stan.

And that’s it. That’s the big drama of the morning. Stan eats some bran flakes at his workbench and drinks coffee while he fixes someone’s crappy little Señor Coffee machine with some vinegar and pulls free a doll shoe wedged under a vacuum roller. He listens to the oldies channel, turns the fan on when it starts warming up in the shop, and pets Geraldo with his foot when the dumbnut comes wandering downstairs and into the wrong shop.

A little after one, Carla comes in, soaking wet and says, “One of the sprayer handles is busted, honey.”

He fixes that while Carla dries herself off and calls in some Chinese food for them. When he’s done, she gives him a plate of egg rolls and a kiss on the cheek. She calls him her hero.

Stan’s sitting and having a beer to cool off when Dipper comes ducking into the shop and hides behind the cash register.

Stan says, “What the fudge?” He stares at Dipper hunched down behind the counter. The kid looks like he’s been running for his life.

“Did anyone see me?” Dipper asks.

“How the heck should I know? I wasn’t looking! Why am _I_ seeing you? You’re supposed to be on the other side of the country,” Stan asks. He drains the beer because whatever this is, it’s probably better if he just goes ahead and chugs.

“Yeah, I know! That’s why I don’t want anyone to see me. I don’t know how far they’re searching yet, but they’re going to know I came to Florida soon if they don’t already. I don’t know how long after that they’ll realize I came to see you.”

“Who the heck are you running from?”

“My parents!”

“Why?”

“Because there was no way they were going to let me come here.”

“You shouldn’t be here! In Florida or the preview. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking you were upset and Ford was upset and Mabel was upset because you guys were upset and I was kinda upset, too, and I should probably take the chance to talk to you,” Dipper says in his cracking Dipper squeak. “And okay, I admittedly wanted to see what this was like, but mostly I’m here to help.”

Stan groans. “Help by getting me arrested for kidnapping?”

“Help by talking to you about this Time Wish thing!” Dipper hisses. “I know you had to try, okay, I get it. But I think-- I think maybe it’s time to talk about what it is you’re trying to do.”

“I’m not even trying anything anymore, kid,” Stan says. “I’m just here to see what could have been. I’m here, I’m seeing it. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine if Ford’s dead!”

Stan winces but doesn’t let that stop him. “He’s not dead. It’s not real. It’s just a… it’s just a dream, you know? We wake up from it, and it’s over. Ford’s fine.”

Dipper shakes his head. “He’s not fine even in the real world. You weren’t looking at him when you made this wish. You hurt him.”

“So what? It’s what we do. I hurt him because he hurts me because I hurt him,” Stan says.

“It shouldn’t be like that,” Dipper says. “You weren’t like that before.”

“We were kids. You don’t get it because you’re still one.” Stan doesn’t even believe himself, but what else can he say?

“Technically, I’m a teen today.”

Stan snorts and rubs his face with his hands. “Right. Happy Birthday, oh teen of great wisdom. You should be celebrating with your sister.”

“My sister’s probably getting shouted at for the rest of reality so I can be here for you.”

That makes Stan look up. “What?”

“I needed help sneaking off and not having anyone notice I was gone. She told our parents we were rushing off to see an early movie together so I could steal Dad’s emergency credit card and get on a plane.”

Stan stares. He feels so proud. “Wait. Did she jump into the preview, too?”

“No. It’s the Mabel from here.”

“And she just... did that for you?”

“Yes. She thought I was crazy, but I told her everything about the summer we had doing things together and our great uncles and Waddles, and she _still_ thought I was crazy but... she helped me anyway,” Dipper explains.

“Huh,” Stan says.

“I think it was mostly about the pig, really,” Dipper says, shrugging it off. 

“Probably,” Stan agrees, letting him. “You could have just called, if you knew where I was.”

Dipper shakes his head. “No, I have something you need to see.” He reaches into his shorts pocket, removes a piece of paper and holds it out. Stan looks down at a wrinkly, damaged photograph of him and Ford when they were kids. “Ford had this on him when they found him.”

“Oh,” Stan says. He slides off the work stool to sit on the floor next to Dipper.

“Our granddad went with your dad and collected Ford’s things, sold off the shack, buried the b- body. Apparently, Granddad picked that up the sheriff’s and he kept it because there weren’t any pics of you around. Then when Mabel and I were born, he sent it to Dad,” Dipper says. “Dad got kinda angry at him for it, said it was morbid. He showed it to us last year when after a fight with Granddad, but only then. I stole it from his desk drawer this morning.”

Stan closes his eyes and lets his head drop back against the register stand. “Ah.”

“I did think maybe I could just talk to you, when I jumped in, but when I woke up at like, three in the morning with double memories, I knew you had to see that.”

“It’s not even from our Ford, kid. It’s from a Ford that went crazy and died thirty years ago. One I didn’t shove through a portal.”

“Yeah, maybe, but he had it even though he was crazy and even though you never came to find him at all,” Dipper says. “Grunkle Stan I… I don’t know what you want here, man.

“Mabel thought talking about Wendy would help. Like what you want is Ford to love you-- like a brother love you, I mean, not weird love you--” Stan laughs high pitched; Dipper keeps going. “And you were going to mess things up to try and make him. But you didn’t do that. You could have. You don’t just have a time machine; you have a Time _Wish._ If you wanted, you could say ‘I wish Ford had forgiven me for breaking his science project and we’d stayed close’, but instead it was about things you did. You even wished you didn’t love him instead of trying to make him love you. What _do_ you want out of all this?”

“I don’t know.”

“...Really?”

“I mean, it would be nice if he loved me as much, like a brother, but… I don’t know. I’m heading for seventy. I’m not in the best shape. I’m probably clocking out sometime soon and what have I got to show for it?” Stan says.  
“I spent a week going over my life with you guys and the only thing I really own is my car, I don’t have a wife or kids, I don’t know if Ford’s even going to want me around after this, and I don’t know if I could blame him if he didn’t. He hasn’t got anything to show for thirty years either except some stupid tattoos.

“I guess I just wanted to know if there was some way I could have done better for both of us. It seemed like it should have been easy as fixing a couple things I did wrong but apparently it’s way more complicated than that? And I don’t actually know what the heck I’m doing or could have done right,” Stan says lamely. He shrugs and sighs.

Dipper says, “I’m sorry; I’ve been there, sorta. Smaller scale. Maybe there’s just some things that break in every outcome unless you break something else.”

“A whole life’s a big thing to break, kid.” Stan doesn’t know whose life he means.

Dipper’s quiet for a long moment. Stan stares at the far wall where all the things he’s got lined up to repair are organized on shelves. He’s pretty sure none of them are going to result in him going crazy and dying, but what does he know? That carpet steamer looks suspicious.

“Okay, I get you’re really old and all, but… You’re not dead yet, and I don’t know. We’re not your kids, but you got me and Mabel.”

“Until this afternoon where you go home, sure,” Stan says. His voice is thick for some reason. He has _no_ idea how that’s happening.

“We’re still going to love you even if we’re not with you, you know. Mabel’s already making a care package to send you, and we haven’t even left yet. Anyway you got Soos for like, ever. Wendy thinks you’re a cool old guy. And the whole town knows you’re a hero now; even Ford knows it. He looked like he got shot or something when you made this wish.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Grunkle Stan, I know you’ve had a kinda rough everything, but--”

“I got it, I got it. I am loved, life’s wonderful, whatever,” Stan says as the phone starts ringing on the stand above them. He picks it up, hangs up, and then picks it back up off the hook to leave it there. Dipper’s got a thinking face on. Stan wonders if he should offer him a pen to chew on.

“Maybe there’s things you could do now to make you happier,” Dipper says thoughtfully. “And you should do them, but I think you need to stop thinking about the things from literally decades ago. You did everything to fix them. Kinda late in life, but some people never fix their junk. You’re not gonna be an angry ghost haunting the Mystery Shack tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I’m probably not _that_ close to dying, kid.” Stan punches Dipper in the arm and gets punched back for the trouble. The kid’s turning out pretty okay, far as Stan’s concerned.

Stan rubs the corner of the photo. It is kinda morbid. Nice to think Shermie and his kid kept it despite that, though. Ma didn’t say anything about it, but who knows if she ever knew?

“You didn’t have to bring this here, kid,” Stan says. He means it like a thank you. The phone in the back office starts ringing, and Stan ignores it.

“Yeah, well. Full confession: I figured since this is either temporary or running away would get me locked in the basement until I’m thirty anyway, I could go ahead and splurge on first class,” Dipper admits. “It was kinda great. They had steak and I had this whole cube thing to myself. I spent so much money.”

“Atta boy,” Stan says.

They fall quiet. After a while, Carla calls out from the back office, “Stan?”

Stan shoves a hand over Dipper’s face and calls back, “Yeah, honey?”

“Apparently your brother’s son is on the phone?” she says. She sounds skeptical. “He says his son’s run away, and the credit card said that he came to Florida.”

“My ...nephew?” Stan says with exaggerated shock. “Does the kid even know who I am?” Dipper pokes him in the ribs; Stan flicks him in the head.

“He says his son also broke a locked drawer and took a picture with you in it. I think you should come talk to him!”

Stan points Dipper to the workbench and motions for him to hide out under there. Dipper crawls across the floor and gets under it, and Stan moves a couple vacuums and the stool into a reasonable block in case someone walks in.

In the office, Carla’s holding the phone and looking perturbed. She has her hand over the mic, and when he walks up to take it from her, she says, “Look, I’d tell him to go take a hike, but he sounds really worried.”

“It’s okay, Carla,” Stan tells her. “I don’t have anything against the guy. Probably wouldn’t hurt to talk to him sometime.”

Carla’s eyes widen a little. “That’s mature of you, Stanley.”

“Don’t sound surprised, Hotpants,” Stan says, and he takes the phone from her. She swats him on the shoulder and heads back towards her side. “Stan Pines speaking.”

Jason says, “Hi, Mr. Pines. I’m Jason Pines, Sherm--”

“Shermie’s boy. I know. Carla says you’re missing a kid?”

“He took my credit card and ran away this morning. His sister covered for him, and by the time we knew he was gone, he’d already bought a ticket and gotten to Orlando.”

“Orlando, huh? I’d check Disneyworld, if I were you. Or any other theme park. Kids here run away to them all the time. One of our fosters did that twice,” Stan says.

“We have theme parks here, Mr. Pines.”

“You can call me Stan. I can’t bite you over the telephone, kid,” Stan says. He’s never been super close with Jason or his wife, but they’re on first name, special occasion cards and gifts, and “we’re sending our children to live with you for nearly a quarter of a year” basis. Weird to be called Mr. Pines by a Mr. Pines anyway.

“Right, Stan. My wife’s on a plane there now and we’ve called the police, but like I said, we have theme parks here in California. He also took a photograph of you I had in my desk, so he may be trying to contact you for some reason. Have you heard anything from him?”

“No, sorry. I can go out and look around, though, and my wife will be here.” Stan walks with the receiver into his storefront and quietly unlocks the cash register. “Can you think of any reason he’d have to want to see me?”

“No, no, I can’t. This is out of nowhere and Mabel --his sister, my daughter-- isn’t saying anything,” Jason says sounding increasingly hysterical. Stan feels a twinge of sympathy for him, but at least he’s not going to remember this. “Which isn’t like her at all, I can tell you.”

Stan takes out all the bills, leaves the coins. “How old’s he?”

“Thirteen today.”

“Okay, at least he’s not a little kid then. He’s got a chance. You have a MyFace?”

“Uh, yes, yes I do.”

“Pictures of him on it?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell you what, I’ll go find your page and look at a pic of him, then I’ll look around the area in the car while my wife holds down the fort,” Stan says. “We’ll ring you back if we find anything.”

“Thank you, Stan. I appreciate that.”

“No problem. Boy probably just wanted an adventure at that age,” Stan says.

When he hangs up, he goes over to Carla’s side and says, “Honey, I’m going to go look around for the kid myself. You’ll be fine if he shows up here, right?”

Carla looks up from a Great Dane’s claws and says, “What? Of course. Do you think you’ll find him?”

“Said I’d try. I’ll be back in a while. ...Love ya.” Stan pauses to look at her one last time. She still looks pretty darn good. He’s not going to regret having memories of her.

“Good luck, Stan!” Carla calls after him when he finally gets the nerve to leave.

Back in his side, he says, “Okay, get in this box. We gotta get out of here. The police are looking for you and your mom’s flying in.”

“Oh boy,” Dipper says.

Stan carries him in a vacuum box out to the car and puts him in the backseat. Trunk would be safer but he’s not doing that.

After he starts up the car, Stan looks in the rearview mirror at the shops for a moment. Then he gets out and goes back into his side and grabs his golf clubs and as many appliances as he can carry. Tosses them all in the trunk and then he drives away.

“What’d you do?” Dipper asks from the box.

“Grabbed some entertainment. It’s over twelve hours till we’re out of here, and we can’t go to any of the parks.”

“Probably for the best. Mabel would kill me for doing it without her,” Dipper says a little mournfully. “But what’s the stuff for?”

“Kid, do you have any idea how boring spending your life fixing other people’s broken crap is? Words don’t do it justice. I got some issues I gotta work out. Also remind me to give Soos a raise or something.”

 

“Fore!” Dipper shouts, and he whacks the blender hard enough to send it flying off the hill and into the ocean. He looks real proud of himself. “You see the distance on that?”

“Not bad. Definitely not totally an embarrassment to the Pines name,” Stan says from the hood of the Stanlymobile. He’s raises his beer can at Dipper in salute.

“Uh, thanks? What’s the Pines name even stand for anyway? ‘People who keep breaking reality’? Even that only fits like, four of us.”

“The best four. No offense to your parents or anything.”

“None taken,” Dipper says, shrugging. He sizes up a toaster that burns on the low setting. “You sure you don’t want to take over?”

“Nah, knock yourself out. I’m living vicariously and enjoying the unnaturally sweltering and muggy night air.” Stan also thinks he hurt his shoulder on that last swing he took. He’s not gonna say anything, though. It’s not like this is his body for much longer anyway.

“Cool.” Dipper says. He lines up the toaster and then sends it off the way of the blender. “Okay, that one didn’t get much air but I think it went further. Too bad Mabel isn’t here. She could kick my butt at this.”

“Yeah? You’d want her stuck in an alternate reality with us for the day?”

“More fun than the one she stuck herself in,” Dipper says. He walks up and grabs new pack of gas station mini-donuts from the pile in the front seat. “Besides, she’s gonna be jealous I technically got an extra day of summer and birthday.”

“Even though you’re enjoying it as a fugitive.”

“Like that’d stop her. Also, first class was like, so nice. I am ruined for all other forms of travel,” Dipper says. He hops up onto the hood to lean back against the windshield. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine, kid.”

“Okay, but really.”

Stan sighs. “It’s been a weird… everything.”

“What was that second life like? You were… n’t very happy when you woke up,” Dipper says. He says nothing about crying, which is as it should be.

“I was a hitman. I killed people for money. Ford legally seized custody of you and had your parents put in jail. Mabel was in foster care. I was missing a leg.”

“Whoa _what_?” Dipper asks.

“Yeah. I had a nice kinda-husband, though,” Stan says. He doesn’t know why he says it. It’s been a long three days all packed into one morning.

“Uh, like how you married Goldie or actual human husband?”

“Actual human, never married but living together for more than a decade.”

“Is that something you knew about yourself already or what?”

“Kinda.”

“Huh. Guess I owe Mabel a quarter,” he says like Stan has any idea what he’s talking about. “How’s Carla?”

“Pretty good. Not that traditional or anything, when we got down to it.”

“You guys ever have kids?”

“Nah. She’s got a thing with her uterus. Well, had. Moot point now. We fostered teenagers a couple times, though, and there’s the dogs. The teens were good kids, mostly.”

“Sorry,” Dipper says.

Stan is, too, except that he isn’t. It’s a complicated feeling. “Not sure I want to add ‘can’t wish into existence children I have memories of’ to this fiasco anyway. Might have dodged a trauma bullet there.”

“Yikes, yeah,” Dipper says. “Do you know what you are going to wish for?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do about Ford?”

“Nope.”

“Can I have some beer?”

“N--”

“Before you say no, remember we _are_ in an alternate world that literally only the two of us will remember. And it is my birthday. That I’m spending being a criminal with you. Instead of my twin sister.”

Stan hands over the can. Dipper takes a sip and spits it out over the hood.

Stan snorts. “Tried to tell ya, kid.”

“Why do people drink that?!”

“Because canned Stanquila never took off,” Stan says. “Least for me.”

Dipper says, “Ew. Grunkle Stan, I don’t think anyone has ever wanted to eat or drink things with the name ‘Stan’ in them.”

“This is also a lesson I could have learned fifty years ago, yes.”

“Well, just remember that for the next thirty.”

“That sounds like an optimistic number,” Stan says.

“Well, you’re not allowed to die until Mabel and I are middle-aged. We already agreed on this, so you’re just going to have to hang in there, or we will definitely use necromancy.”

“It might be kinder not to reanimate my rotting corpse, kid,” Stan say, touched.

“How would it be any different from normal?”

Stan pushes the kid off the hood. It gets him a powdered mini-donut to the face, but there’s worse things.

Dipper wears himself out with the appliance golf and crashes in the back of the Stanleymobile after midnight. Stan stays out on the hood and stares up at the sky, listens to the ocean. Carla’s probably in a state. Dipper’s parents have probably heard Stan disappeared too, by now. This life was perfectly normal; now Stan Pines is back to being a fugitive because the Stan he is now always will be. Perfect to wrecked in a day.

“Perfect was a little boring anyway,” Stan says to himself. He’s not sure whether he believes it or not, but he’s fine with that.

 

Stan opens his eyes, and Mabel’s yelling at Time Baby.

“They’d better be okay, Time Baby, or I swear I will--”

“Honey, don’t threaten the cosmic entity with time and lightning powers,” Stan says.

 **“A MORTAL HUMAN CHILD WOULD BE NO TROUBLE FOR ME,”** Time Baby says snottily, which is how Stan knows for sure he’s not omniscient.

Mabel spins around. “Grunkle Stan! Dipper? Dipper!” She performs an impressive maneuver that involves crash-hugging Dipper and then Stan, even though the three of them weren’t lined up for it. They all go down in a heap.

Stan looks up at the sky and notices for the first time there there’s a flock of geese frozen in the air above him.

“Mabel!” Dipper shouts with a laugh. “We’re fine, okay? Cool it.” He sits up on Stan’s solar plexus, and Mabel’s already got a knee to Stan’s gut. It’s killing his bladder. 

“I’m touched and all but I’m going to either suffer internal bleeding or pee on you two if you don’t get off me,” Stan says. He could just pick them up or sit up and knock them off. He doesn’t for some reason.

“What happened? Oh my gosh, are you two really okay?” Mabel says, not moving.

“We’re fine,” Dipper says. “Promise.”

 **“I DID SAY THEY WOULD COME TO NO PERMANENT HARM. WHY DID YOU NOT LISTEN TO ME?”** Stan catches a glimpse of Time Baby’s face and thinks it looks a lot crabbier than when he made his last wish. 

“I’ll be great when I’m not being sat on,” Stan says.

“Okay, great,” Mabel says, relieved. Then she shouts, “So what the heck, Dipper?!” Mabel shoves Dipper hard off Stan’s chest. Then she points an angry finger at Stan. “And _you_ \--”

 **“PINES FAMILY,”** Time Baby says. His face is more scrunched than ever.

Stan sits up now, dislodging both Mabel and Dipper’s foot that was still kicking him in the chest. “Sweetie, yell at me later when Time Baby’s gone.”

“You’d better believe it, buster,” she says ominously. Stan wonders for the first time if the previews didn’t happen instantly when viewed from the outside.

Stan dusts himself off and shuffles forward past the kids towards Time Baby. He says, “So, it turns out none of those three previews are gonna fly.”

**“YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE ANY MORE. I AM DONE WITH THIS EXCURSION. I DID NOT COME HERE TO BE HARASSED, MEDIATE FIGHTS, OR WATCH YOU ALL HAVE PETTY FEELINGS.”**

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Stan says. Though that just sounds like an average day around here. No big deal.

 **“WHATEVER YOU DO WITH THE WISH, I AM DONE WITH THIS. I HOPE TO NEVER HAVE TO ENCOUNTER YOU FOUR AGAIN,”** Time Baby says fussily. Lightning gathers again, and Stan wonders briefly if this is going to be a throwdown. Instead, a glowing orb coalesces in front of Time Baby and floats down to Stan. It hovers just above his hands and has that same symbol on it that Time Baby’s head does. **“DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WITH IT. I AM GETTING CRABBY AND MY CRIB AWAITS ME.”**

“Thank you, Time Ba--” Light flashes. Time Baby is gone with it, and above, geese start honking. “--by. Huh.”

Stan looks around. The kids are sitting on the ground, looking awkward. Ford is… Ford’s standing off to the side, further than he was before. He’s got his arms crossed and his body turned slightly away. Welp.

“Okay, so,” Stan begins slowly. “I may have gone a little… I mean.” He sighs. He’d rub his face but he’s not sure about this floating Time Wish deal. “I just wanted to know some things, guys. I had to see how it played out.”

Ford scoffs and says, “Three ways it played out out of--”

“If you say the thing about exponentially many tree branches or whatever one more time, I am not continuing this apology.”

“Fine,” Ford says. He spins around and walks back into the house.

Stan stares after him and doesn’t know what to do.

The things he said… He was hurt, okay? And angry. Hurt and angry is a bad combination on anybody with anybody but it’s especially bad for them. Stan’s had a day to stop being so angry, even if some of the hurt’s still there and never going away. Ford’s had less time.

“What did it look like when we went into the preview?” Stan asks.

Mabel says, “Like you were standing there like a frickin’ statue for like, minutes and minutes. I should have drawn on your stupid faces.”

“Not instant when I saw the second one,” Dipper says. “Mabel, did something happen when--”

“You hurt him, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel says. “And you both scared me. You didn’t even say anything about all those safety measures! You just went still and were gone and could have been living a day of being tortured or killed and junk!”

“I spent a day fixing appliances in Florida,” Stan says.

“I stole dad’s credit card and took a flight to Florida to talk to him,” Dipper says.

“Well that... That sounds boring.” Mabel almost sounds disappointed. “You guys were fine?”

“Totally fine. Us, at least. And you and Mom and Dad were, too, though I scared them by running off.” Dipper shrugs. “I talked to Stan about some things instead.”

“What about Ford?” Mabel asks.

Stan looks away just as Dipper turns like he’s going to look at Stan. Dipper slowly says, “Er, Ford kinda went crazy? And died. Instead of going through the portal. Thirty years ago.”

Stan gets a fuzzy slipper chucked at his head. He deserves that.

“Ouch,” he says mildly.

“You wished your brother _dead_?” Mabel says.

“It’s not like that was the point of the wish! It was just a side-effect. I thought-- I thought we’d both be better off, actually.”

“How could you possibly be better off not lov--” Second slipper. “--ing your family or having them love you? That’s crazy! That is the craziest thing I have heard _this entire summer!_ ”

“I was, actually,” Stan makes the mistake of saying. He looks over and sees Mabel puffing up and quickly adds before she can throw _Dipper_ at him, “From the traditional sense of things! I wasn’t a lonely, old criminal in Oregon, okay? I was a married man with a store in Florida. I fixed-- I fixed coffee machines and toasters and vacuums.”

“That sounds lame,” Mabel says. “And dumb.”

“We had dogs?” Stan offers.

“Well, okay, that part’s fine, but the rest is lame and dumb. He’s your brother.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I was the one who pushed him away, okay? I just stayed pushed away once he did. Anyway, it’s not real--”

“Saying you wished you didn’t love him is real. That really happened.”

“And I am going to apologize for it eventu--”

“Do it now.”

“I don’t think he--”

“Grunkle Stan, I am officially angry at you until you apologize to your brother.”

“What’re you, my mother?”

Mabel crosses her arms. She does a pretty good impression of Ma for someone who never met the woman. Stan looks at Dipper who puts his hands up as if to say, “This is on you, buddy.”

Stan sighs. He tests out just holding one hand under the Time Wish orb thing, and when that works he shuffles back into the house. Behind him, Mabel starts in on Dipper, so at least he’s not alone.

Ford’s not in any part of the main house. Stan heads down into the basement. This part hasn’t really been rebuilt like the rest of the house, so it’s a mess and Stan wouldn’t come down here otherwise. Ford’s sitting in the wheelie chair in the remains of the command center.

“I’m sorry,” Stan says right off. “I didn’t know those first two worlds would suck so hard. You tried telling me, and I didn’t see how it could end that badly. I just wanted us to both be happy. I'm an idiot."

Ford doesn’t look at him. "Mabel's making you apologize."

"Well, yeah, but she's right that I need to and I was trying to earlier anyway. I didn't know I'd send you to Crazytown. Twice." Thrice, but at least Ford didn't need to live that last one. "I am sorry. I hope you'll be... okay."

"I'm fine, Stanley."

"You're not. And that's my fault no matter what I do or don't do, it turns out,” Stan says with a sigh.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean? What happened in that last wish?"

"Doesn't matter,” Stan says. “You didn't live it."

"The hell it doesn't, Stanley. Tell me."

"I'll tell you when you tell me about that first world," Stan snaps back. "Let's be fair, then."

Ford flinches. Stan clenches his free hand and refuses to feel bad about it. He's not an idiot, and Ford's never been as good a liar as he is.

"You're right," Ford says eventually. "It doesn't matter, you don't remember, and you don't have to." He turns in the chair so that he's facing Stan, but he also puts his head down into his hands. "You're better off not knowing."

"Likewise," Stan says.

They stay quiet for a long, long moment that Stan keeps trying and failing to end. He doesn't know what to say. He feels like he's standing barefoot in the middle of the den, and there's art supplies in every direction. Molten hot glue there, sharp rhinestones there, giant scented markers that can roll underfoot and dump him on his ass there.

Ford eventually ends the silence for them. "Do you know what you're wishing for?"

"I have an idea," Stan says quietly. He guesses they're just not talking about this either, then, and he's too much a fucking coward to force it. "I'd like your input, though."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rejected Other Warnings: Talking about feelings is hard.
> 
> Thanks to the peeps who gave me feedback on what to name the kids' dad [here.](http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/242436.html?thread=1352997636#cmt1352997636) Short version: yes, I know this would mean Dipper was stuck as Mason Jason Pines, and that's why I did it.
> 
> Thank you for the lovely comments last chapter! ~~A couple of you made me cry in the good way.~~


	5. Stan-ah Montana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan makes his real wish. Even he's not sure it was the best idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: American possums are terrifying hellbeasts if you don't know. Feelings are hard. Remember Dictator Ford? He was the worst. Director Ford was only marginally better.

Stan opens his eyes, and he’s greeted by the sight of a giant possum grinning at him.

“Yeesh,” Stan says with a grimace.

The possum, through a mesh screen in its mouth, says, “Hi there! Are you ready to have some old-fashioned fun, fun, fun?”

“They don’t pay you nearly enough, do they?” Stan says, even as beside him, Dipper and Mabel start making surprised noises and tugging at his arms.

“Nope!” the man in the costume says with manic cheerfulness. He moves on to the next family group, who all have better responses except for the toddler who begins wailing immediately at the sight. Stan doesn’t know who he feels more sorry for.

“Grunkle Stan!” Mabel says, tugging hard enough that Stan goes sideways and only avoids falling on her because Dipper’s still got his other arm. “What the heck? Where are we?”

“Gold Nugget City,” Stan says, though he’s possibly already regretting this. “The funnest miner-themed amusement park in all of Montana. Happy Birthday?”

Mabel gasps and makes a noise unsuitable for human ears while Dipper says, “Wait, what? How? Did-- wait, did you use your Time Wish for this?”

“Well, what else was I gonna use it for?” Stan asks.

“It’s so old fashioned-y,” Mabel says, looking around like the fake-old wooden buildings are a magical kingdom. “All those women have bustles!”

“You hate old-timey stuff, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper says. “Also, seriously, you used your wish for this? Don’t we have to go home this afternoon?”

“We’re spending the day here, then we go back to this morning and we’re back in Gravity Falls,” Ford says. He’s walking up with a handful of colored armbands. “You’ll still get to have your party, say goodbye, and be on the bus.”

“Great Uncle Ford!” Mabel says, and she uses her free hand to grab onto him. The four of them now form a human chain in the middle of the park’s entryway. A woman with a stroller makes a pointed swerve around them. “You’re here, too!”

“Of course I am,” Ford says. “It’s your birthday.”

Mabel squeals. Dipper’s still being a killjoy, though.

“Okay, no, wait. Is this because of what I said about it being a shame we couldn’t go to Disneyworld?” he asks Stan. “Because I didn’t want you to use your wish up for it!”

“It was mine to do with what I wanted, and if theme parks are good enough for the players who win the Football Bowl, they’re good enough for me,” Stan says. “Besides, you were right. It wasn’t fair you got extra birthday and your sister didn’t.”

Dipper stares at him wide-eyed, like maybe he’s gonna keep protesting. Then he smiles, sorta, and punches Stan in the shoulder. “You’re getting soft, Old Man.”

“I also wished for a few thousand dollars, and mostly I picked this place because I got banned decades ago” Stan says. “I say we have fun for the day, then we mess with some stuff on the way out, and we’ll have a solid alibi of your birthday party in Oregon with a town full of witnesses if anybody tracks us down. They won’t be able to prove time travel.”

“ _That’s_ our grunkle,” Mabel says.

“Okay, now this makes more sense,” Dipper says.

“You didn’t say anything about that,” Ford says.

Stan shrugs. “What? It’s still _my_ wish. Besides, the kids get me.”

“What’d you do to get banned, anyway?” Mabel asks, totally at ease with the thought. She hasn’t let go of Stan or Ford yet. “Did you punch a possum guy? That sounds like you.”

“I think it’s best we don’t talk about that,” Stan says.

Ford sighs massively and hands out the armbands. Blue for the kids, and orange for Stan and himself. The orange ones read SENIOR in cheery print that hurts Stan’s soul.

“These should get everyone full access to everything that isn’t the ‘Extreme Gold Mining Experience,’ which is extra,” Ford says.

“Ooh,” says Mabel as she puts hers on over the sleeve of her sweater.

“And in the interest of not being asked for things every five minutes,” Stan says. He reaches into his suit -- _“You should also wish we’re all fully-dressed when we get there, Stanley,” was admittedly good input, judgemental as it was_ \-- and pulls out way too much money to trust a couple of thirteen year-olds with. He hands it off to the kids. “Here. Anything you can carry comes home with us at midnight.”

“That possibly seems excessive, Stanley,” Ford says, though there’s not enough bite in it to be worth mentioning. The kids are suitably impressed and enthusiastic, at least, judging by the tackle-hugs.

 

The morning is a nauseating blur of rollercoasters, swinging rides, and dropping rides that Stan deeply regrets agreeing to go on with the kids. He doesn't regret it enough to stop, though, even when one of the rollercoasters snaps a picture of him screaming his lungs out next to a delighted Mabel, with Ford and Dipper looking mildly amused and absolutely thrilled in the row behind. Stan just pays the stupid picture fee and tucks the print into his suit pocket. To his surprise, Ford gets one, too.

"For Mabel's scrapbook," Ford says. He puts his print in his trench coat while the kids are scoping out a ride that slings people into the air like a swinging pickaxe.

"Ah," says Stan.

 

Come lunchtime, they all sit down in a fake saloon and drink root beer out of over-complicated bottles and eat exactly the same kind of food one could get at Greasy's, just on artfully crappy plates with terrible names like “Minerloaf.” Mabel tells the story of the time she and Dipper solved the mystery of the eighth-and-half president while Stan spent the day getting pelted with tomatoes. Stan's memory of the day is thankfully foggy even with the retelling, but Ford seems to enjoy the whole stupid tale.

When Ford takes a bathroom break, Stan gets a moment to talk to the kids. He leans across the old-timey wooden table and says, "Look, you guys gotta not tell Ford about the whole dying thing."

"What, why?" Mabel says.

"He doesn't need that. I-- look I put him through enough this morning without that. Leave it, would ya?"

Mabel and Dipper share a look. It's one of those silent talking looks that Stan can't help resenting a little, and then they say in near perfect unison, "Okay. We won't say anything."

"Thanks," Stan says.

They eat Gold Nugget Sundaes, which are just chocolate ice cream with chunks of banana in it, but the presentation of a minecart bowl makes it kinda classy. Stan gets the waitress to sing "Happy Birthday" to the kids, and they each get a little paper hat out of it.

"We are way too old for this," Dipper says, poking at his party hat where it sits on top of his normal hat. It's got a donkey pulling a cart on it, and despite what he says, Dipper doesn’t actually take it off.

"We are absolutely not too old for this," Mabel says. Her hat has a mining canary that, frankly, looks like it's died of poisonous gas already. She waves her shovel-shaped spoon across the table at Stan and Ford and adds, "We're not going to be too old for this even when we're _their_ age."

"You could say that a little less like we're on death's door," Stan says.

Mabel shrugs him off. "Of course you're not. You're not allowed to die until we're at least forty."

Dipper tells Stan, "See? Told you."

 

The afternoon finds them at Scam Artist Alley, ostensibly the fair games. It turns out Ford grew a throwing arm since they were kids, and he winds up with a giant groundhog-or-possibly-rat stuffed animal with a mining hat. He sits next to Stan on a bench while they wait for Dipper to exhaust himself trying and failing to shoot aluminum ducks. Mabel's bankrupting the ring toss guy.

"Looks kinda like your employee," Ford says, looking at his prize.

Stan snorts. "Draw a question mark on its stomach and you've got your very own Soos."

"Might just," Ford says.

Stan watches the kids, waiting, and when he can't take it anymore, he say, "I really am sorry."

"Stanley," Ford says, sighing.

"What? I am."

"I'm not mad at you. Please stop trying to apologize and fix things. You're not very good at it," Ford says, which is pretty frickin' rude in Stan's opinion. Stan fixed an inter-dimensional portal without knowing shit about them. He's demonstrably okay at fixing things, even when he shouldn't. "I already forgave you for everything."

"Because I let myself get mind wiped and you pity me. It's fine, but let's not pretend it's anything else."

"Oh, for the love of--" Ford says, and the groundhog goes tumbling onto the ground when he throws his hands up. "Stanley, I do really forgive you, just like I hope you do really forgive me. I thought we covered this."

"You can't tell me you're okay with everything," Stan says.

"But I am!" Ford says. "The bad parts are over, and the mistakes we made, that we _both_ made, they're why we're here. Well, not here-here. The Time Wish is why we're here at this ridiculous park, but here on the probability tree."

"And what's so great about being here, huh? Other than that it could be worse? We spent however long angry at each other and--"

"Stanley, we're not angry anymore, and we're not apart anymore, if that's what you're going to say. Unless you are still angry at me...?"

"No, of course not," Stan says. Well, sometimes, but not much overall.

"Then there's plenty to recommend here. There's the kids, there's everything I learned traveling between worlds, and there's everyone back in town. There's… there’s even a pig," Ford says.

Stan watches Mabel approach with enough stuffed animals to smother a grown man and says, "Yeah, I guess the pig grows on ya."

Ford's hand comes down on Stan's far shoulder and squeezes. Stan resists tilting his head to lean on it.

"I'm happy to be here, Stanley," Ford says quietly, just before Mabel comes up and dumps various stuffed abominations on Stan.

"I'm gonna try the darts next," she says gleefully. "Great Uncle Ford, you wanna compete? Betcha I can kick your butt."

Ford says, "I don't kn--"

"Whoever wins decides what fake old timey food's for dinner," Stan says, before Ford can protest. It earns him a very mildly grumpy glare from Ford, but Mabel holds out her hand for a shake.

"Deal! May the best Pines twin win," she says.

 

Mabel wins, of course. Whether Ford lets her or not, Stan doesn't know. It means dinner is Golden Gopher Nuggets, which the menu claims are just chicken, but Stan's not convinced they're not actually gopher. Dessert's a mudslide cake with little plastic miners trapped in the chocolate like they've died in a horrible accident, and Stan sends a thought out to Goldie as he licks chocolate off one of them. Ford stares at him incredulously for some reason.

When they finish eating, the sun's set, and Ford says, "Okay, what is it you're planning on doing, Stanley? I'd like an exit strategy here."

"So, unless they changed things dramatically since I was last here, which I doubt given what I’ve seen so far," Stan says. "There should be an arcade and gift shop around the corner from here."

"Are we stealing something?" Dipper asks. "I don't want to go to jail on my birthday."

"Eh. Not stealing so much as matchmaking," Stan says. Mabel makes an approving noise, and he continues, "It's fine as long as we don't get caught."

 

A little after eleven at night finds Stan running with the kids, Ford, and a novelty miner statue across the Montana landscape. The kids are laughing, at least, but Ford keeps saying things like, "I cannot _believe_ you, Stanley!"

"Look, if you're divorcing Goldie, we gotta get him someone else," Stan huffs back. "Besides, you keep telling me I should exercise more!"

"This is obviously not what I meant!" Ford shouts. Though he's still running and not trying to make Stan leave the statue, so it's all good.

They manage to hit a clearing in a cow field some mile or so away, and wait there for the clock to tick over to midnight. In the distance, police sirens are still sounding. This is when Dipper pants, "Couldn't you have just wished for another miner? Or bought one with money you wished for?"

"Nah, had to be this guy," Stan says, still holding the statue to make sure it goes back to Gravity Falls with them. "He and Goldie used to be a matching set when you walked in the door of the gift shop, but when they fired me from being a possum, I could only carry Goldie out."

"Aw," Mabel says. She’s lost most of her stuffed prizes in the mad dash, but she doesn’t seem that phased. She’s still got some stuffed into her sweater, making her look morbidly pregnant. “What’s this one’s name?”

“I dunno. You name him,” Stan says, which is the last thing he gets to say before the day ends, one blink to the next.

When Stan opens his eyes again, it’s early morning at the Shack, and today the kids leave for real.

 

Stan keeps it together for most of the day, through the birthday Stancakes --“Okay, fine, but if there’s any hair in them, I’m puking on you, Old Man”-- the birthday party, and even when Ford pulls the rug out from under him and asks him to come travel the world with him despite everything. Ford even has the stupid picture, and Stan _still_ holds it together. 

He does finally lose it when the kids leave, but he’s not going to feel any shame about that. A man can miss his family without it being a mark against him.

 

Stan eats dinner alone at Greasy’s because Ford’s doing something something science, and Soos and Wendy are off having lives. Lazy Susan gives him a free piece of pie and doesn’t wink at him or anything, just pats him on the shoulder.

Stan eventually makes his way back to the Shack. There, Abuelita is on a vacuuming tear, and Stan hides in his room before she can vacuum him. He’s not sure how things at home are going to work while he and Ford sort out how to sail off, but he does know his room will be safe for the moment. He can totally take Abuelita, if he needs to.

On Stan’s bed, there’s a stuffed skunk with a felt pine tree on its forehead and a stuffed weasel with a felt star on its stomach. Their paws have been hot glued to each other on one side, and there’s a sticky note on the weasel that says, “Hug kit! For hugs, wrap around self. Love, Mabel”

Stan does so and lies down. It takes him embarrassingly long to stop sniffling over it, but it’s not like anyone’s around to see it. He settles with the stuffed animals behind his head, and reaches into his pocket. 

Stan’s still got the picture Ford showed him. It’s in better shape than its counterpart from the last preview, but it is damaged. Stan lets it rest on his chest as he closes his eyes.

 

He wakes up to Ford shaking his shoulder.

“What?” Stan says, bleary-eyed. He grabs Ford’s wrist to push him off or maybe hold him there. It’s the last one that happens, either way. “What, _what_?”

“I’ve been kicked out of the basement,” Ford says. “The woman with the vacuum cleaner is working on it.”

“Oh,” Stan says. “What time is it?”

“A little after eleven at night,” Ford says. “Scoot over.”

Stan scoots over, and to his surprise, Ford sits next to him, against the headboard. His leg presses against Stan’s arm.

“Have you been kicked out of _everywhere_?”

“No, actually, I…” Ford stops, and he frees his hand from Stan’s grip to reach out and pick up the picture from Stan’s chest. Stan forgot it was even there and is now slightly embarrassed that it looks as though he was cuddling it or something in his sleep like a freak. “I wanted to talk to you,” Ford says, looking at the picture briefly before tucking it into his own coat again.

“I think we’re good, aren’t we?” Stan says. He really hopes they are, because it’s been five days of August 31st and he doesn’t know how much more he can take trying to make it okay.

“I hope we are,” Ford says. “But I have a confession to make. Yesterday, when we were all at the park? I got the kids to tell me what they knew about that third preview.”

Stan groans and puts his hand over his eyes. “Those brats. They promised.”

“Did they?”

“I made them promise at lunch, when you went to the bathroom.”

“Oh, I got to them before that, when you were puking after the spinning mining helmet ride.”

Little bastards. They could have warned him. 

“Look, it was just a branch on that tree, right? Hundred ways it could have gone,” Stan says. He waves the hand not covering his face dismissively.

“Two,” Ford says.

“What?”

“Stanley, I wasn’t surprised. I remember what it was like. If I hadn’t been able to ask you for help, I wouldn’t have asked anyone. Either Bill would have won or I… I would have died. I don’t know whether I’d have been brave enough to do it on purpose, but it was a strong possibility.”

Stan pulls his hand off his face. He looks up at Ford and feels the urge to punch something yellow. He says, “How did you even know you could?”

“Could what? Kill--”

“ _How did you know you could ask me?_ We never talked in this timeline, and you asked anyway. You never asked in the other world.”

Ford shrugged. “You called.”

“What? When-- Okay, like twice in over a decade and I hung up.”

“It was on our birthday both times, Stanley. I took a guess.”

“Ah,” Stan says, and he closes his eyes. “Bit of a risk.”

“Yes, well,” Ford says, and he leaves it at that. “In any case, I just wanted to tell you it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay if you’re dead.”

“But I’m not. I’m here.”

“I guess,” Stan says. “Though now I’ve lost any bargaining chip I had about that first world.”

“Well, yes,” Ford says. He sounds uncomfortable.

“Not like I have a third party to get help from.”

“No.”

“Not exactly fair.”

“Not exactly.”

“Guess I’ll never know about a _whole life_ I had,” Stan says dramatically. He spreads his hands in the air to encompass the the enormity of this outrage.

Ford says, “I’d like to spare you it, if I could.”

“And what if I don’t want to be spared it? What if I want to know what I could have been like, how awful I could have been? I know I killed people in that second one, and you still think whatever I did in the first is worth keeping a secret? How bad can it be?”

“You didn’t do much wrong, Stanley.”

“I _stabbed_ someone, you said.”

“You stabbed me, and I deserved it.”

Stan stares. “What, on purpose? What the hell could you do to make me stab you? Wait. The eye was me or was this _some other_ stabbing we’re talking about?”

“No no, it was the eye, and… Stanley, you’re sure you want to know this?” Ford asks, and he meets Stan’s eyes.

“I want to know what you could do that would make me not-- care if I stabbed out your eye,” Stan says. Sure, he’s wanted to punch Ford fairly consistently in life, but that’s different from permanent body part removal.

Ford stays quiet, and instead of harassing or beating it out of him, Stan waits. He keeps waiting. And waiting...

Eventually Ford says, very quietly, “You had a daughter.”

Stan’s stomach turns. “What?”

“Her name was Pamela, called Pam by everyone who wasn’t me. Her mother was Barbara, called Babs by everyone who wasn’t me. You met Barbara when you were working at a bike garage in California because I told you to come out to the coast instead of sticking around in Glass Shard Beach being miserable.”

“What happened to her? To Pamela?”

“She was fine. She didn’t talk to you anymore, though. You and her mother had gotten divorced when she was a child, and you took Pamela to come stay with me in Virginia when I took a job at the Pentagon. I just never asked you two to leave. The thing is, you and her mother had only divorced because you found out she was cheating on you when the truth of the matter was that she never did.”

“What?” Stan asks. He’s sitting upright now, and half of him wants to wring everything out of Ford while the other half wants to go hide and never hear any of it.

“I hated Barbara starting the moment you told me you had to marry her, and it only grew over the years. By the time I was offered the job in Virginia, I-- I told them I’d take it if you and Pamela would come but not Barbara, so they set her up.”

“Fuck,” Stan says.

“For years, the three of us were fine. Pamela was a clever girl; she did well in school. When she went to college, though, she reconnected with her mother secretly. By then, Barbara had figured out I must be to blame, and Pamela believed her. You… you believed me. Well, him. The other Stanley believed the other Stanford.

“They two fought about it on and off for years, and then finally she had enough and stopped visiting and calling as long as you stood by me-- him. He distracted you as much as he could when that happened, invited you to travel. You’d spent so long fixing other people’s ridiculous cars and bikes that I gave you some of your own but...” Ford falls quiet, and Stan shakes him by the shoulder.

“Tell me.”

“You still were upset about Pamela, and by that time, he was listening too much to Mallory about her correction procedures, and I thought-- he thought you’d be happier if you could just let go of Pamela.”

“What did you do?” Stan asks with growing dread. “Ford, what--”

“It wasn’t me, Stanley! It was a different Stanford Pines. One who got rid of Russia! And I… he had Mallory make you forget about Pamela.”

“My daughter.”

“The other you’s daughter, yes.”

“Fucking hell, Ford.”

“I know, I know. It was an abhorrent thing to do, but I-- the me that was there, he thought it fixed a problem, and it worked for a while. It was a different kind of technology than what Fiddleford made, chemically based. You were okay for years.”

“Until?”

“Pamela had kids, and she tried reaching out to you. I-- the other Stanford, he stopped her for a while, but she really was clever. She managed to get a note to you, and you started remembering things and…

“The three of us, while Pamela was growing up, we’d wash the dishes together. Wash, rinse and put on the rack, dry and put away. You and I were doing that, just us at the sink and you reached out to hand Pamela a plate where she wasn’t. You remembered her. It turned into a fight. I was lucky I only lost the eye.”

“Fucking--” Stan says, and then he just doesn’t know how to finish the thought. “Fuck!”

“I’m sorry, Stanley. I didn’t want to tell you, but I guess it was your life. Even if it really wasn’t. I now have firsthand memories about how crazy not remembering things can make a man.”

“I had a daughter. And grandkids. Fuck, Ford.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You--” Stan flops over and smushes his face into his pillow. “Ugh!”

They’re quiet for achingly long before Ford says, “I don’t know what to say, Stanley.”

“There was a you that would take those away from me!” Stan yells at the pillow.

“Yes, there was. I’m not him, though.”

“I know that!”

“You’re not the you that had a daughter, and you’re not the you that would kill people for money, and I’m not the me that drove himself crazy erasing parts of his own mind or who died thirty years ago, and you’re not even the man who fixed appliances in Florida,” Ford says. “We’re just us, Stanley. We made enough mistakes in this lifetime without--”

“Erasing?” Stan asks. “Wait, is _that_ why you looked psychotic in the second world? You were erasing things like McGucket?”

“Yes, unfortunately. After you took the journal, I reached out to Fiddleford again, and we agreed that it might be best if we erased Bill from my memories and… Since you were the one that had taken the Journal, I-- the other Stanford, he decided that it might be better if he erased you as well.”

“What? You-- I remember you were half-crazy, but I talked to you. I talked to you a handful of times after the journal. It was a lot of yelling. My whole memories of that are weird, but I remember the yelling.”

“Yes well, you had gotten to be a nuisance enough that I still ended up knowing you. The children weren’t the first people you’d gotten away from the Institute’s reach. The other Stanford had talked to you a number of times and then erased you after each one. There was a whole file on it; I don’t have firsthand memories of any of it, but the researcher at the Institute who had the file was annoyed that it kept getting requested.”

Stan pushes himself up on his hands to look at Ford. “Good.”

“What?”

“Good. I am so glad that the me who killed people for money never let you totally forget him. Good for me.”

Ford sighs. “It still wasn’t us, Stanley.”

“I don’t care if it was us or not. Good.”

“Okay,” Ford says. “Good. I’m glad I didn’t have to start from scratch finding you in that world. I’m so glad we had that little chat in California.”

“Because we had such a great time there. So glad for both of us you visited,” Stan snaps.

“Well, what was it, Stanley? Was it a good thing or not?”

“Good that you weren’t allowed to completely erase me, bad that--” Stan deflates a little. “Bad that we fought again, okay? It’s a mixed bag. That whole world was.”

“It was universally awful from my viewpoint.”

“It had a couple good things,” Stan says, shrugging.

Ford stares at him in confusion until understanding dawns, and then says, “Oh, right. Your man friend.”

“‘Man friend’? Yeah, my ‘man friend’.” Seriously, what is this, the… whatever decade people called gay lovers ‘man friends’ in?

“There were notes on him in your file.”

“Are you being weird because he was a guy?”

“Don’t be absurd, Stanley.”

“What, are you going to tell me he was secretly evil? Because I’m not sure I’ll care. He was good to me.”

“No, he was fine, probably,” Ford says. “The other me didn’t like what he knew of him, but that could be his own issues.”

“Manny was nice,” Stan says defensively. “Carla was too.”

“Was she?”

“Yes. I know you never warmed up to her in high school, but--” It wasn’t like Ford warmed up to anybody in high school.

“No, she was nice enough. I guess.” Ford shrugs. “She left you here, right?”

“Yeah, well, I may have been at fault there, and she may have just reacted badly to me being bad.”

“I’m glad you had a good life with her, then,” Ford says. “You worried Mabel.”

“Yeah,” Stan puts his face back down into the pillow. He sighs as the feeling of missing the kids comes back to the front, and he says, “What was she like?”

Ford doesn’t make the mistake of thinking Stan means their niece. “She looked more like you than her mother, so she was... handsome, not pretty.”

“You calling me handsome?” Stan says with a weak laugh. He thinks he feels like crying again, but he’s just going to keep him face smothered in this pillow until that passes.

“Your face is unobjectionable,” Ford says.

Stan says, “Go on.”

“Your gut could use some wor--”

“ _About the girl,_ ” Stan says, blindly and half-heartedly landing a punch somewhere on Ford’s torso.

“She had brown hair, brown eyes. I-- I drew a picture of her.”

“What?” Stan turns to blink up at Ford. He looks old, and his face is pulled tight in what Stan thinks is pain. 

“Those lives, the memories we have of them aren’t ours. We only have our own memories of remembering them. That’s why even the things that should be clear are fading a little. When we woke up, I didn’t know if I would ever tell you, but I drew her, just in case,” Ford says, and he begins to reach into his coat.

“Don’t,” Stan says, surprised at himself but he can roll with it. “You’ve got a picture. It’ll… It’ll keep.”

“Okay, Stanley,” Ford says, and he drops his hand.

“She sounds good.”

“She was. I-- He spent years thinking she might come around. She was so smart, she had to see that her mother wasn’t worth it eventually. That’s what he thought,” Ford says. “He loved her, as much as he was capable of.”

 _We’d wash the dishes together..._ “Three of us playing happy family, huh?” Stan asks.

“Something like that. She was good child, all through growing up.”

“Surprised even psychotic you put up with me for that long,” Stan says. “Did I live in that bunker?”

“Yes.”

“Up until the eye stabbing?”

“Yes.”

“You, too?”

“Yes, Stanley,” Ford says, annoyed.

“So, you sorta did have a brainwashed wife,” Stan says.

Ford makes an annoyed noise. “Stanley--”

“What? Let a man find some humor where he can,” Stan says. That earns him a sigh but no protests. “Keep talking.”

“Why? I don’t think you’ll be able to remember her. You don’t have memories of the other you’s memories of her.”

“You have them. Share,” Stan says. “I want to know what my daughter could have been like.”

“She was clever, like I said. Her morals were closer to yours in this world than yours in that one. The other me had to use influence to get her out of trouble a few times. She wasn’t entirely unlike that employee of yours,” Ford says.

“I really hope you don’t mean Soos,” Stan says. “Anyway, as of today, I have no employees. I’m a jobless dead man who’s hiding out in my brother’s house that I kinda gave to a handyman.”

“We can sort out how to get to the anomalies I was talking about in the morning,” Ford says. “I think we’ll have to drive across country and get a boat on the east coast.”

“You talking road trip, Sixer? Because I gotta tell ya, I don’t know how many states have standing warrants between here and there.”

“Well, you got me put on something called the No-Fly List, apparently, and you’re dead legally. It’s driving and hoping for the best or sailing down to Panama and back up.”

“Not feeling very Central or South America, to be honest,” Stan says.

“Then driving it is,” Ford says. “You think your car can take it?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Stan says. “I’m good at fixing it.”

“That’ll probably work then,” Ford says. “You still… You still want to come with me.” It’s not a question.

“Always, Ford,” Stan admits. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything. Stan searches around until he finds where the hug kit fell off the bed and picks it up. He settles the stuffed animals back under his head and says, “Keep talking about the kid I never had.”

“What do you want to know?” Ford asks. He’s noticed the stuffed animals, obviously, but he’s not saying anything.

“Everything you thought was worth remembering,” Stan says.

Ford slides down and Stan watches in mild surprise as he rests his head next to Stan’s. “You had her when we were nineteen. She was born early, so she was small. She had a little port-wine stain birthmark on her shoulder that was shaped like a duck. Normal number of fingers and toes, though.”

“Nobody’s perfect,” Stan says with a small shrug.

Ford keeps staring up at the ceiling, but he smiles, just a little, and Stan closes his eyes on the sight so he can keep it a while longer in his head, like a picture.

“She once almost made the other Stanford start a war with China, ahead of the schedule for that,” Ford says, and he tells Stan the story and more, and Stan falls asleep to the sound of his brother’s voice.

 

Stan wakes up and the first thing he sees is Ford asleep on Stan’s pillow.

It’s a sight that almost makes Stan tear up, and not just because they’re both got some morning breath going on. He reaches out before he can think better of it, and touches his knuckles to Ford’s cheek. Ford’s gotten old, but he’s still the best damn thing Stan’s ever seen. It’s not even vanity, as far as Stan’s concerned. Ford wears the same features better.

He thinks they really are okay. Stan already misses the kids something awful and the things Ford told him last night were fucked up, but they happened to other Stans and other Fords. It’s not their problem, so long as they can live with knowing it.

Stan moves his hand away from Ford’s face and ends up putting it on Ford’s chest, where he leaves it because no one is awake to tell him not to. He rubs his thumb over the sweater fabric. Stan has always known, from that first awful realization when they were teenagers, that he’d never have everything he wanted from Ford. It’s just one of those things he can’t have, like the moon or, apparently, a whole different life. But Ford by his side is everything he wants that is possible to--

“Stanley?” Ford asks. He does not sound nearly groggy enough for comfort, though his eyes aren’t open.

“Uh, yeah?” Stan says. He doesn’t remove his hand, because he feels like that would be a give away. Jerking his hand back looks guilty. Leaving it there looks innocent. Probably.

“Can I tell you something strange?”

“Don’t you always? Shoot.”

Ford swallows. Stan watches his throat as it happens. Ford says, “When you said--” and then he stops himself for so long that Stan thinks he’s just not going to start again. As Stan opens his mouth to prompt him, though, Ford does continue. “You still don’t know how terrible that first Stanford was.”

“You _still_ leaving things out? What else could there be besides deleting my daughter from my head?”

“I…” Ford reaches up and puts his hand over Stan’s. Stan’s heart is this close to throwing a fit and giving up on life. “The other Stanley told him something once, and…”

A thought forms in his mind that is twenty parts terrifying, ten parts horrifying, and one part hope. Stan hates the part of himself that always throws out that little bit of hope. It’s his inner rube.

“Ford, whatever it was,” Stan says cautiously. “You’re still my brother. I still-- I still care about you as my brother. I couldn’t even make the wish not to.”

“I know, Stanley,” Ford says. He squeezes Stan’s hand. “Maybe it’s best if I don’t say it.”

“Maybe,” Stan says. He looks at the side of Ford’s face and swallows. Okay, to hell with it. They’re gonna be dead eventually anyway. “But if he told you what I think he told you, then you should probably know that it’s true here, too. Sorry.”

Ford laughs. It’s not even a small laugh, it’s a big one that makes him come off the bed a little. He doesn’t let go of Stan’s hand though. “ _Stanley._ ”

“What?” Stan says defensively, and he tries pulling his hand back. He fails.

“Believe me, you’re not the one that needs to apologize in this scenario.”

Stan frowns. He’s lost the thread here. “Okay, you know what, start over. What is it you’re trying to say?”

Ford stills and keeps tight hold on Stan’s hand. Stan’s beginning to think he’s never getting it back, and it’s his favorite. Stan tries a new tactic. He turns his hand in Ford’s grip and laces their fingers together. Stan meant it when he implied Ford’s fingers were perfect. They surround Stan’s, and that’s pretty perfect.

“Oh hell, Stanley,” Ford says, and he turns over the presses his mouth to Stan’s cheek like a total loser. Stan’s mouth is right there, why not aim a little higher?

Stan turns his head to fix that. Ford pulls away.

“What?” Stan asks, hurt and suddenly worrying he missed some cue. He’s pretty sure none of this is strictly brotherly, though. This has definitely gotten gay or at least _man friends._

Ford grimaces. “Your breath reeks, Stanley.”

Stan throws his hands up, though one of them is still tangled with Ford’s. “Your is no picnic either, sweetheart, but I wasn’t gonna let that stop me.”

Ford rolls his eyes. “Forgive me for not wanting to vomit on--”

“Oh my god,” Stan says, and he finally yanks his hand out of Ford’s grasp and clambers over and past him. He’s still wearing the clothes from yesterday, sweater and all, and he storms out of his room.

Behind him, Ford calls out, “Stanley, wait!” but Stan ignores him in favor of going into the bathroom. He takes out his dentures, brushes his gums, rinses the teeth off, and gargles. In the mirror, he looks bleary and vaguely like death itself would skip over him rather than visit. Whatever, Ford can cope.

Stan stomps back into the bedroom where Ford is sitting up against the headboard again.

Ford begins, “I was trying to tell you, I _have_ portable mouth cleaning solu--”

“This is me not caring,” Stan says, and he sits on his brother’s thighs, pressing close. He grabs Ford by the face and kisses him on the mouth. Ford’s hands come up. One buries in Stan’s hair and the other strokes up his back, and his fingertips all dig into Stan’s skin through the fabric of his clothes. Stan should have stripped down, but then he’d be way less dressed than Ford in his whole trench coat outfit.

It’s not a bad image, actually. Stan has a love-hate relationship with the get-up. He pulls at the neck of the sweater so he can get his fingers on more skin, but his other hand’s content to press against Ford’s chest through the knitware. During his travels, Ford got fit, and it’s been driving Stan a little nuts.

Stan’s really getting into the kissing and he’s beginning to grind down as Ford grinds up, but then Ford pulls Stan’s head back by the hair. It feels great, but Ford keeps pulling until Stan has to stop kissing him. Stan goes with it but doesn’t let go of his bruising grip on the back of Ford’s neck.

“What?” Stan says. His voice is rougher than usual.

“I heard something,” Ford says.

“What?” Stan asks again, just as he hears Soos calling out from somewhere else in the house.

“Mr. Pines and Mr. Pines’s brother! There’s breakfast! I didn’t make it so it’s okay!”

“That,” Ford says.

Stan looks down between them. His stomach’s in the way, really, but he can feel just fine the way they’re pressed together and both hard. Ford’s gone still now, and Stan knows how this is going to go. 

“When can we leave, do you think?” Stan asks flatly.

“Tomorrow morning, assuming we spend the day getting ready and planning,” Ford says. The words and tone are all very neat and practical, but he’s still got one hand pulling Stan’s hair.

“Great.” Stan rolls off and to the side forcing Ford to finally let go. Stan stares up at the ceiling and waits for his erection to give up hope. He’s a SENIOR now, should be easy, right? “What _were_ you trying to say about the other world? You lost me.”

Ford shifts around, actually crossing his legs like he’s got something to hide that wasn’t rubbing against Stan’s thigh a moment ago.“It wasn’t anything good, I’m afraid.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“The other you told the other me how he felt, which I assume from the last few minutes you also feel for me. It was after Pamela left, and… things happened. Once.”

“Only once?”

“The other me had it removed from the other Stanley’s head, along with Pamela,” Ford says. “He had rather more issues with the matter than I care to foster.”

Stan cringes. “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And yet you seem pretty… relaxed about it? All things considered,” Stan says, because this gift horse is great, amazing, and perfect and all, but he at least wants to know if it’s going to go rogue and trample him any time soon.

“I once visited a world where people were born with two heads, and they largely reproduced by parthenogenesis and married themselves. There was another where everyone was, at most, third cousins because the breeding population was so small and they hard large, genetically identical litters,” Ford says. “Of the issues about you I retained through the years, that at least wasn’t one of them.”

“Huh,” Stan says. He doesn’t have nearly as good an excuse as that. He just wants Ford. “I would definitely murder you if we had to share a body.”

“Likewise,” Ford says, and he smiles crookedly over at Stan. Stan smiles back and finds himself sitting back up to kiss Ford just because he can, _holy shit._

Stan’s on his back, taking his turn to dig a hand into Ford’s hair when there’s a knock at his bedroom door.

“Mr. Pines?” Soos calls from the other side.

Ford pulls away, and Stan groans in the bad way.

“ _What_ , Soos?”

“My grandma made breakfast, Mr. Pines,” Soos says. “It’s cornmeal pancakes. Do you want to maybe come eat some?”

“In a bit, Soos,” Stan says. He does like cornmeal pancakes. He just likes them less than he likes Ford’s thigh rubbing between his. They were getting somewhere.

“Oh, okay. They’re really good. Also, do you know where your brother is? Abuelita says she thinks she might have scared him off last night, and I can’t find him,” Soos says. He sounds sincerely worried. “I checked everywhere.”

“He-- I don’t know, he probably went out early to look for leprechauns like a nerd or something. How should I know?” Stan says.

Ford pinches him and whispers, “I’ve already found them before, Stanley, and they’re jerks.”

“Pinching me and whispering in my ear isn’t going to help me _not_ have a hard-on when I go out, so stop that,” Stan whispers back. Ford buries his face in Stan’s shoulder and laughs silently.

“Okay, I’ll go look around in the woods,” Soos calls cheerfully. “These are really good pancakes.”

Stan listens as Soos walks away, then he says, “Okay, so you’d better go out to the woods somewhere and run into him before he gets Soos-napped by the gnomes or something.”

Ford pulls away and rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says. He looks rumpled and amazing. Stan doesn’t want to be anywhere else in the tree of probability or whatever. He could stand to be somewhere else in general, though. 

“We’re leaving today, by the way,” Stan says as Ford stands up. “I don’t care if we gotta just toss things in the car and make a break for it in the night.”

Ford shrugs. He says, “I can work with that.”

 

They do manage to get ready before dark, though Ford’s still muttering about various readings. Soos starts crying when Stan’s got the car packed, and Stan can’t stop the hug that comes of it. He doesn’t even want to, if he’s being honest with himself.

“We’ll be back a lot, okay?” Stan says patting Soos awkwardly on the back.

Soos keeps blubbering, and it’s making Stan feel misty-eyed, until Ford butts in and hands Soos the groundhog he won in Montana.

“Here,” he says, cheerfully. “It seems to be working for Stanley.”

“Wait, Stan has stuffed animals?” Soos asks with distracted, childlike wonder, while Stan begins sputtering that he’s just watching them for the kids.

He makes a break for it as Ford talks about winning the groundhog and takes the chance to walk through the Shack once more before they leave. Everything is almost painfully clean, the work of Abuelita. Everything’s also quiet and empty in a vague way Stan can’t pin down. The kids are really gone.

Soos has already started gently reorganizing things, and that’s okay. It’s his place to do that now. Stan walks by the various attractions, and he stops at the pair of miners now near the cornicorn to pat Goldie on the head as goodbye. The new one has a sticky note on it that reads, “Goldford? Dipper says Fordie. I think it works as a nickname. Love, Mabel”

Stan leaves the note there and goes back outside to rescue his brother from Soos’s crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Some spectacular drawings of this fic by the lovely Lassenby](https://lassenby.tumblr.com/post/171434384479/tribute-tribute-tribute-pounding-on-the-desk)  
>  and  
> [An adorable piece of art by the also lovely rawkingbunny](http://rawkingbunny.tumblr.com/post/171764738306/i-finished-reading-its-a-stan-derful-life-by)
> 
> Rejected other warning: Okay, seriously, possums are horrible.
> 
> *Flops* I'm probably writing porn epilogue for this after I recover from having to talk feelings, but who knows when that is. It also needs some more cleaning up.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read and commented. You're beautiful <3


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